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    “Fashion meets art and design” at Pittsburgh boutique by NWDS

    Global team NWDS took a spontaneous approach to designing the Tons fashion boutique in Pittsburgh, which contains a mix of modest materials and iconic furniture pieces.

    The Tons store in the city’s East Liberty neighbourhood occupies a long, narrow building with its shorter side facing the street.
    The Tons store features a variety of “mundane” materials, including concrete breezeblocks and metal cansFormerly an atelier, the two-storey structure was reimagined by NWDS to create a light-filled destination “where high-end fashion meets art and design”.
    “Inside is a spacious and light-filled interior that now hosts a multifunctional venue designed to meet the needs of a modern-day sartorialist equally interested in fashion, art, and culture,” said the group.
    In the lobby, new apparel collections are displayed below a tapestry-like artworkDesigning the interiors of the 400-square-metre space involved dividing up the floor plan into several distinct areas that all flow together, but serve different purposes.

    Throughout the various retail and office areas, a selection of unexpected materials were combined and layered.
    Some of the walls are splashed or streaked with white paintImmediately through the glass front door is a lobby where new collections are presented.
    Here, product displays were built from concrete breeze blocks, while the upper walls above the clothing rails were dressed in transparent plastic curtains.
    Glass panels are used to partition different retail areasThe ceiling above was covered with metal tubes of different lengths and diameters, and gives way to a double-height space where tall tapestry-like artworks by Sasha Brodsky hang over opposite walls, and white paint was seemingly dragged across another.
    “There was a lot of spontaneity and many design decisions taken on site: some surfaces were uncovered and left in an unfinished state, and some were splashed with white paint,” NWDS said.
    A selection of iconic furniture designs can be found around the store, including Frank Gehry’s Wiggle ChairFurther along, fitting rooms are lined up behind black and white streaked partitions to one side, facing a room defined by glass panels that hosts monobrand products.
    Towards the back, a lounge area that also displays shoes is reached by descending a short flight of stairs, which run parallel to a raised, built-in seating area.
    A built-in seating area at the back of the store overlook the sunken shoe roomThe lower floor level in this space results in a higher ceiling, which NWDS took advantage of by extending a mural the full height behind a wall-mounted shoe display.
    A staircase at the very back leads to the upper storey, where retail displays and office areas for store employees sit side by side, and a photography studio is in full view.

    Checkerboard walls wrap Awake NY store by Rafael de Cárdenas

    “Inside Tons, the client space and the workspace are blended,” said NWDS.
    “Buyers and managers have their work desks right next to the sale rails on the first floor, and store visitors are welcome to take a peek at the fashion photo shoot happening right there at Tons.”
    The unfinished aesthetic continues across the upper storey, where retail and offices spaces are blendedThroughout the store are a selection of iconic furniture pieces that continue the theme of unexpected materials and functionality.
    They include metal-mesh Hi Tech armchairs by Piero Lissoni, a Mate chair by (A+B) Dominoni, Quaquaro that doubles as shelving, and Frank Gehry’s compressed cardboard Wiggle Chair for Vitra.
    “An interior comprising modest materials is a backdrop for high-end Italian furniture pieces, a collection carefully curated by the NWDS team,” said the designers.
    An open photography studio allows shoppers to watch shoots as they happenNWDS was established in 2013 as a team of architects, designers, curators and researchers from cities including New York, Tbilisi, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Yerevan, Lisbon and Dubai. The group’s projects span residential, retail, hospitality, culture, exhibition design and more.
    Other recently completed boutiques that feature unusual materials include the Boyy flagship in Milan, which reveals layers of the store’s history, and a Parisian jewellery store featuring rippled sheets of acrylic.
    The photography is by Ekaterina Izmestieva and Alexandra Ribar.
    Project credits:
    Design concept: NWDSSupervision and project management: Brnz BureauLighting design: Natalia MarkevichArt: Sasha Brodsky

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    Shiftspace brings IM Pei rowhouse in Philadelphia back to “original vision”

    US studio Shiftspace has renovated a rowhouse in Philadelphia originally designed by Chinese-American architect IM Pei, restoring its original qualities after decades of alterations.

    Designed by Pei as part of a row of houses in the 1950s, the three-storey unit in the Society Hill neighbourhood had undergone several renovations and extensions over the years.
    Shiftspace was tasked with paring back these alterations to restore Pei’s original vision while enhancing it with contemporary details.
    Shiftspace has renovated an IM Pei-designed rowhouse in Philadelphia”Understanding Pei’s original vision for these houses, we approached this project with a sense of reverence that allowed us to see our design as enhancements to that original vision rather than starting from a blank canvas,” said Shiftspace partner Tim Barnes.
    Rowhouses are common in Philadelphia and sometimes referred to colloquially as “rowhomes”. Much of the city’s housing of this typology was built in the late-18th and early-19th centuries.

    According to Shiftspace, Pei designed the Society Hill townhouses to “bridge the gap” between these brick rowhomes and his nearby condominium, Society Hill Towers.
    It was originally built in the 1950sThe original exterior of the home has been retained. It consists of a mostly brick facade punctuated at the street-facing side by a large window with a small steel balcony.
    At the top of the home is a band of concrete-framed clerestory windows.
    Wooden louvres replace wallsInside, a central staircase that reaches from the basement to the third storey is essential to the redesign. Cleaving to Pei’s vision, Shiftspace has reoriented the home around this spiral stair and introduced a series of open-concept living spaces.
    The updated floorplans follow a typical format, with public spaces on the first three floors and three bedrooms on the fourth.
    At ground level, a curved breakfast nook with banquet seating leads to a kitchen that sits between the central staircase and a wall, and back into a dining area that has access to a garden patio. Here, some solid walls have been replaced with wooden louvres.
    The home is oriented around a spiral staircaseAbove are a living room and a study, separated by the staircase, as well as rearranged bedrooms and bathrooms.
    Two of the bedrooms on the top floor share a bathroom, while the main sleeping space has an ensuite. The bathrooms are tucked into spaces attached to the central core.
    “Our design reverted back to Pei’s original concept using a centralized core for all circulation, bath and mechanical spaces while reconfiguring for a master suite, kitchen, and entry area,” said founding partner Mario Gentile.

    “With IM Pei’s death, the last of the modern monument makers has passed”

    The studio added a new frame to the oculus at the top of the staircase that circulates additional light to the largely windowless structure. It also added skylights to the bedrooms.
    Minimising divides between rooms also allowed for further circulation throughout the home and for more light to penetrate the lower levels from the oculus.
    Shiftspace wanted to honour Pei’s original visionThe design was geared towards a more active lifestyle, which led to the addition of bike storage tucked away into nooks in the basement and on the ground floor.
    Shiftspace completed the renovation with a light-toned colour palette for the more public spaces and darker hues for the bedrooms and study.
    Pei was born in Guangzhou, China in 1917 and emigrated to the United States in 1935, where he founded a studio today known as Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. He designed a number of noteworthy buildings including Dallas City Hall and the Grand Louvre pyramid in Paris.
    Other buildings of his to be renovated include the Eskenazi Museum in Indiana.

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    MuseumLab opens in ruins of lightning-struck Pittsburgh library

    US firm Koning Eizenberg Architecture left worn-looking ornate walls, brickwork and columns inside this museum for children in Pittsburgh, which occupies a historic library that was struck by lightning. Koning Eizenberg Architecture (KEA) designed the transformation of the damaged library into MuseumLab for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. It forms an extension of its campus […] More