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      Collective installs stage in New York ONS Clothing store

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      Architecture firm Collective has inserted a stage with a green curtain for hosting events in the back of the ONS Clothing store in New York City.The flagship location of ONS, a menswear apparel brand, is located on 201 Mulberry Street in New York’s Nolita neighbourhood.
      It is located inside an existing structure situated 1.5 metres below street level that was previously a garage.

      ONS intends to use the stage space for hosting cultural events, such as exhibitions and pop-ups that it says will change regularly.

      Steel railings, ceramic tiles and asphalt flooring are among the references Collective has taken from the streetscape to guide the store’s design.
      To balance the dark colours and textures of the flooring the studio has inserted pops of colour using light blue tiles on the changing room pods and blue and green counter surfaces.

      “The material we used in the store were carefully chosen for the feeling of the street – ceramic tiles, steel ramps, fibre glass objects while their bright array of blue and green colours balance out the crudeness of the black asphalt and steel,” Collective said.
      Pale wood floors and wood panelling cover the walls in the front room of the store, which the studio conceived as a “standalone wooden box”. In the space there are two wood counters for displaying accessories, while rectangular cutouts in the walls to hold clothing racks.

      An asphalt ramp replaced the existing wheelchair lift to create an accessible pathway from the street into the storefront and to the rear of the space where the studio has constructed a large stage.

      Lunya styles Manhattan store like a “glitzy, upscale New York apartment”

      “The ramp allows a natural flow of circulation from a higher point entering the very deep area at the back of the store, and at the same time, its hovering presence performs as an object in space,” the studio added.

      There are several “props” on the stage including blue- and white-tiered shelving units, curved plinths for displaying products and potted plants, added as a decorative element.
      Angular green drapes attached to a steel rack on the white ceiling and wrap around the space to form an adjustable divider. When closed the fabric curtains extend 30 metres forming a backdrop for the retail displays.

      “Together with the rearrangement of the bright colour display props, the back room area of the ONS,” it continued.
      “Flagship is immediately domesticated and activated into a stage for events, with a light touch of living room like domesticity and comfort.”

      Collective is a studio that practices architecture, interiors and exhibition design founded in 2015.
      It is led by Betty Ng, Chi Yan Chan, Juan Minguez and Katja Lam and has offices in Hong Kong, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.

      Los Angeles clothing brand Lunya also has a retail space in Nolita that takes cues from “upscale New York” apartments, while other stores in the city include a jewellery store in SoHo.
      Photography is by Eric Petschek.

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      Burberry and Tencent collaborate on interactive WeChat shop in Shenzhen

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      Visitors to Shenzhen’s Burberry flagship store can use Tencent’s WeChat app to interact with the window display and play their own music in fitting rooms.The British fashion brand and China’s largest social media company collaborated to design a shop that suited Shenzhen’s growing reputation for technology.

      Shoppers use WeChat, a Chinese messaging and social media app, to engage with the shop in Shenzhen’s MixC development.

      Tencent and Burberry have produced a custom mini program that is unlocked via WeChat. Users create a profile and are given a digital avatar in the form of a cartoon fawn that hatches from an egg.

      Through the app, shoppers can book one of the three themed fitting rooms, pre-select the clothes and play their own music while they try them on. They can also use this program to book a table at the in-house cafe and make appointments with stylists and other services.
      To encourage engagement, the program has a rewards system to earn “social currency” that unlocks custom content, such as new characters and outfits for the animal avatar and exclusive dishes on the cafe menu.

      All the products have QR codes, which can be scanned to display more information and visual hints for styling the project – and give the user more points for unlocking content.
      The interactive window display is currently a sculptural recreation of the runway for Burberry’s Autumn Winter 2020 show. Mirrors and screens capture the movement of people as they interact with it, which users can capture and share with their phones.

      “Social media is an increasingly important part of the customer journey and the interaction between social media and physical surroundings is ever more seamless,” said Burberry senior vice president of digital Mark Morris.
      “Our social retail store in Shenzhen is our response to this. It is a space where the social and physical worlds merge, taking interactions from social media and bringing them into the physical retail environment,” he told Dezeen.
      “The tech we use in the store is intended to provide a seamless journey that augments customers’ online and instore life. Therefore, this is not a tech store, but a beautiful luxury store augmented by technology.”

      Burberry chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci turned to the brand’s archive to create a visual look for the themed rooms that correspond to the digital platform.

      Peter Saville collaborates with Riccardo Tisci to design new Burberry logo and monogram

      The Italian fashion designer used the Thomas Burberry Monogram and the fashion house’s fawn print as a recurring motif – the latter being the inspiration for the WeChat avatar too.

      Furnishings, fixtures and plinths throughout the store are made from plywood and mirrors. Tisci used a palette of beige, pistachio, pink and blue throughout the 10 rooms in the shop, each of which has a different theme.
      The three bookable fitting rooms are decorated around the concept of Burberry Animal Kingdom, Reflections and the Thomas Burberry Monogram, and visitors can book their favourite via the app.

      Thomas’ Cafe is decked out in high-gloss beige with chamfered mirrors, animal-patterned wall panels and layers of sandy-coloured curtains.
      Even the tabletops are mirrored, creating a unique backdrop for diners to capture their meal for sharing on social media.

      In the Trench Experience room, digital displays set in the plywood walls show moving images of nature in reference to the fashion brand’s founder, Thomas Burberry, who designed a waterproof trench coat for British troops in the first world war. This room has more opportunities for customers to unlock custom content.
      “I am fascinated by the balance between nature and technology, and the energy that connects the two,” said Tisci.
      “This store explores this relationship, blending the digital and the physical realms in an exciting new concept. I wanted to bring this love of the outdoors to life through all the elements of the store.”

      Burberry previously brought technology to its London shop, where it installed a robot that appeared to chisel sculptures out of polystyrene blocks.
      Tencent recently opened its new headquarters in Shenzhen, a pair of towers designed by NBBJ joined by multiple bridges to encourage staff to meet and interact.

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      New York hair salon Hawthorne Studio is designed for social distancing

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      Wooden frames, moveable styling stations and plants are used to encourage social distancing in this New York hair salon, which local studio BoND designed during the coronavirus pandemic. BoND, led by architecture duo Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger, began working on the design of Hawthorne Studio in January this year, just a few months before
      The post New York hair salon Hawthorne Studio is designed for social distancing appeared first on Dezeen. More

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      Forte Forte fashion boutique in Madrid is filled with shapely details

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      A pale geometric relief wall offsets brass and green-marble decor details in this Madrid boutique designed by creative duo Giada Forte and Robert Vattilana.Madrid’s Forte Forte store occupies a corner plot in Salamanca – a glamorous district of the city known for its boulevards lined with luxury fashion boutiques and upscale restaurants.

      It was designed by the brand’s co-founder, Giada Forte and her partner, art director Robert Vattilana.

      The pair devised opulent interiors for Forte Forte’s London, Milan, Tokyo and Paris stores, but wanted the new Madrid branch to have a more restrained aesthetic that still offered moments of “poetry and feminine delicacy”.

      “[The store] is charged with a sensual energy polarized on the offset of masculine and feminine, curves and angles, geometry and sentiment,” Forte and Vattilana explained.
      “There’s a recognizable grammar of surfaces, treatments, colors uniting the different spaces that’s born from our creative dialogue, but the narration takes on a different metric and tone.”

      An off-white relief wall that features a haphazard array of raised geometric shapes runs down one side of Forte Forte’s ground level.
      A structural column in the store has been given a similarly geometric form. It extends up through a circular opening in the ceiling that has been backlit to look as if natural light is beaming through from the outdoors.

      At the centre of the store is a low-lying semicircular bench perched on a mottled pink rug. The flooring that runs underneath has been inlaid with mismatch cuts of grooved and plain stone, as well as tiny triangles made from emerald-green Iranian marble.
      The same veiny marble has been used to make the store’s door handle and its rounded service counter.
      Directly above the counter, thin brass stems have been loosely arranged in a grid-like formation to form a hanging sculpture. It supports a handful of warped glass orbs.

      Heavy gold velvet curtains help screen-off the cylindrical changing booth that dominates the rear corner of the store.
      Brass doors punctuated by small portholes can be pulled back to grant access to the inside of the booth, where teal-blue carpet has been fitted to match the blue underside of the curtains.

      Fashion sits alongside found objects at the Forte Forte boutique in Milan

      Garments are hung from spindly brass rails, while accessories and lifestyle items are presented on a set of brass shelves held up by a pole that’s been made to resemble an oversized bolt.

      A curving blush-pink staircase leads up to the store’s second floor. Forte and Vattilana have used the expansive landing that sits between the staircase’s two flights of steps as an additional display area.
      It’s dressed with a huge leafy plant, another brass clothes rail and an organically-shaped mirror.

      Forte Forte opened its first brick-and-mortar store in 2018 – until then, the brand’s clothing could exclusively be purchased online.
      The inaugural store in Milan has been decorated with a curious array of found objects including a nude sketch, a lump of coral and a bust of the goddess Venus that came from an old French foundry.

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      Aesop's London store takes its colour from the red sandstone of Glamis Castle

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      Precast stone blocks coloured with red sandstone from Glamis Castle in Scotland form the walls of this refuge-style Aesop store that architecture studio Al-Jawad Pike has created in a west London shopping centre.The studio designed the small store for skincare brand Aesop to be a retreat from the bustling aisles of Westfield shopping centre in Sheperd’s Bush.
      “We wanted the store to be a refuge from the busy mall environment, it is a sort of building within a building – using genuine masonry construction rather than applied finishes or surfaces,” Al-Jawad Pike co-founder Jessam Al-Jawad told Dezeen.

      Al-Jawad Pike chose to build the walls of the store from precast stone blocks, which enclose the space and create a feeling akin to a walled garden. The curved form of the walls is also meant to reference the undulating brickwork of Uruguayan engineer Eladio Dieste.

      “The concept was to create a kind of walled garden within the mall,” said Al-Jawad.
      “It was inspired by the ‘crinkle crankle’ wall of the English countryside as well as the structures of Eladio Dieste, which both use an undulating waveform to give rigidity to a single skin of masonry.”

      Earthy tones have been applied throughout the store. Powder from the same red sandstone that was used to make the 17th-century Glamis Castle in Scotland has been used to colour the precast stone blocks.
      The resulting red blockwork walls, which were built using two standard shapes of precast blocks, have been paired with red concrete-tile flooring and a clay plaster ceiling.

      Frida Escobedo segments Aesop Park Slope with rammed-earth brickwork

      “We wanted to use a warm colour to provide a sense of natural earthiness that reflected the red bricks of typical masonry walled gardens, said Al-Jawad.
      “The colour is called Glamis red named after the red sandstone of Glamis Castle in Scotland.”

      Set against the earthy red backdrop, Aesop’s products are displayed on stainless steel shelves. While the main space is broken up by three cast resin sinks that were produced by Sabine Marcelis.
      “We hope we created a calm ambience that enables customers to engage with the Aesop products,” Al-Jawad explained.
      “The hand-washing sinks which are a big part of the customers’ interaction with the product and the sales people are also given centre stage – being made out of honey-coloured resin they also look a bit like big bars of sculpted soap.”

      Aesop often allows its designers to create monotonal stores. For its Sydney store, architecture studio Snøhetta used granite to covers almost every surface, while Frida Escobedo used rammed-earth brickwork throughout its store in Brooklyn. Bernard Dubois also clad the walls of the brand’s Brussels store in distinctive yellow Belgian bricks.
      London-based Al-Jawad Pike was established by Al-Jawad and Dean Pike in 2014. The studio has previously used pigmented concrete blockwork for the exterior and interior of a south London home extension and combined brick, concrete and timber for an extension to a home in Stoke Newington.
      Photography is by Ståle Eriksen.

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      Shanghai studio Arizon's interiors facilitate “surprising spatial experiences”

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      VDF studio profiles: Shanghai design studio Arizon specialises in the planning and interior design of retail spaces, from boutique department stores to shopping malls.The studio was founded in 2008 by Junwei Shen. Over the course of his career, the designer witnessed the rapid evolution of Chinese commerce from standalone shops to giant malls, which is why he prides himself in creating interiors that are able to adapt to the evolving needs of different businesses.
      “We exploit the aesthetic and business potential of architecture to the full,” he explained.
      “Through avant-garde artistic approaches and an awareness of ecology, we hope to create ineffably inspiring and surprising spatial experiences that help our clients to grow their businesses.”

      The Fortune Bridge features arched recesses to create functional spaces within a walkway
      The studio often makes use of natural lighting and geometric lines in its projects, and uses blank spaces strategically.

      This can be seen in its design for the Fortune Bridge – a pedestrian walkway leading to the Vita Rive Gauche shopping boulevard in the town of Zhengzhou.
      By adding arched recesses to either side of a central footpath, Arizon was able to turn this simple thoroughfare into a multi-functional space that can play host to cultural and culinary events, and house further retail units.

      Stain glass windows feature in the Vita Green community mall
      Elsewhere in Zhengzhou, the studio was also responsible for Block B of the Vita Green community mall, which Shen describes as a “feast of light and shade”.
      “The facade is clad in wire mesh and sunlight enters the interior from different directions through stained glass windows,” he added. “This creates an amazing play of shadows that breathes life into the whole mall.”
      Another of Arizon’s retail projects is situated in Dezhou and celebrates the city’s rich history as a trading port – a virtue of its proximity to the Wei River.
      This legacy is visualised in the Inzone mall through a system of ceiling baffles, which jut out to create the impression of being underwater and looking up at the hull of a boat as it cuts through the surface.

      The ceiling fins of Inzone mall are shaped like the hull of a boat
      Similarly, the studio clad the entryway of the Kids World in Shanghai’s Joy City mall with a gradient of rainbow-coloured tubes, designed to resemble the stems of fantastical flowers breaking through soil.
      Faced with the challenge of consolidating three different, staggered ceiling heights, Arizon introduced a system of undulating shapes throughout the space, replicating the silhouette of gently rolling hills.
      The project earned Arizon a German iF Design Award for interior architecture this year.

      Multicoloured tubes cover the walls and ceiling of Joy City’s Kids World
      Studio: ArizonWebsite: arizon.com.cnContact address: info@arizon.com.cn
      About Virtual Design Festival
      Virtual Design Festival is the world’s first online design festival, taking place from 15 April to 30 June. For more information, or to be added to the mailing list, contact us at vdf@dezeen.com.
      A studio profile on Virtual Design Festival could expose your work to Dezeen’s three million monthly website visitors. Each studio profile will be featured on the VDF homepage and included in Dezeen’s daily newsletter, which has 170,000 subscribers.

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      Gabriel Chipperfield gives London newsagents plush revamp

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      Gabriel Chipperfield has created an “Alice in Wonderland”-style warren of luxurious rooms behind Shreeji newsagents in central London. Shreeji newsagent and tobacconist is located on Chiltern Street in London’s affluent Marylebone neighbourhood, just a stone’s throw from the notable hotel Chiltern Firehouse. The shop was set up by Sandeep Garg in 1982, and has since […] More

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      Commune designs Serra marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles to be airy and luxurious

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      Oak and brass display cabinets fill this cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles that local studio Commune designed to look like a jewellery store. Commune designed the store for Portland brand Serra that sells and produces cannabis products, from caramel treats to pre-rolled joints. Serra, whose Portland flagship was designed by OMFGCo and JHL Design, tasked […] More