Tens Atelier designs VeVelte Yintai Center Store’s interior
VeVelte Yintai Center Store by Tens Atelier focuses on curating a collection of quality brands, including those from emerging Chinese fashion designers, with the aim of showcasing Chinese design globally. Tens Atelier took on the task of redesigning the VeVelte store in Hefei‘s Yintai Center, emphasizing its role not just as a brand showcase but also as a salon for VIP members, fostering interaction between the brand and consumers.
The site presented challenges, such as a large smoke pipe near the entrance and irregularly arranged structural columns. The design concept introduced the idea of a ‘boulder’ to guide customer flow and views, strategically minimizing the impact of columns. The ‘boulder’ form also serves to delineate distinct brand display and functional areas, optimizing the use of space.
all images by MRC
Tens Atelier draws from abstract geometrical stone forms
The symbolic character of stone is incorporated into the space, not by directly introducing natural stone but by refining an abstract geometrical form inspired by the concept of a stone. Tens Atelier’s approach integrates the abstract concept of stone with the identity of VeVelte, conveying the symbolic meaning through the overall spatial experience.
Considering the seasonal theme changes for each brand, the designers opted for a uniform warm yellow overall color, while maintaining flexibility with white walls for display and posters, allowing for easy adaptation to evolving brand themes.
VeVelte Yintai Center Store by Tens Atelier showcases quality brands, promoting Chinese design
the redesign of VeVelte in Hefei’s Yintai Center creates a VIP salon to enhance brand-consumer interaction
site challenges prompted the design of a ‘boulder’ concept to guide customer flow and views
the ‘boulder’ form minimizes the impact of columns and optimizes space by delineating distinct display areas
Fashion house Bottega Veneta has opened a boutique designed by its creative director Matthieu Blazy inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade in Milan.
Bottega Veneta‘s two-storey store is distinguished by three primary materials: glass, Italian walnut and green Verde Saint Denis marble.
A spiral staircase greets shoppers at the Bottega Veneta store in Milan
This trifecta is applied in strict grids to evoke Italian modernism and provide an organising principle in the various rooms.
“There are different experiences of space in the store,” said Blazy. “I wanted to express the idea of a domestic interior referring to Italian modernist architecture that contrasts with the aesthetic of a spaceship and to capture the intimacy and the imagination of getting dressed.”
Grids are used throughout the store to organise materials
From the galleria, shoppers are greeted by a dramatic spiral staircase made entirely from Italian walnut – a material used throughout the interior as panelling, modular shelving and furniture.
Green marble is laid in squares across the floors, separated by strips of walnut and occasionally swapped for larger patches of dark green wool carpet.
Glass blocks are integrated into the walls and ceilings
Square glass blocks are similarly arranged into grids across walls and ceilings, illuminated from behind to produce a soft warm glow throughout the store.
Green leather chairs and benches are accompanied by custom rounded wood tables and stools to form lounge areas.
“Throughout the space, soft textures are found in leather seating and wool carpets, while modular shelving units build a sense of discovery and play,” Bottega Veneta said.
The fitting rooms feature leather niches that provide a place to sit
Fitting rooms are fully lined in walnut, except for leather-wrapped niches that provide a small seat, giant mirrors with built-in lighting and more green carpet.
Sculptural polished metal elements form the door pulls and clothes hooks, their smooth surfaces contrasting with the more textured golden planters and entrance handles.
On the upper level, recesses formed by the Galleria’s arched windows provide nooks for seating and plants, as places to look out onto the highly decorative arcade.
Designed in 1861 by architect Giuseppe Mengoni, the neo-classical Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is one of Milan’s most desirable shopping destinations.
Polished metal sculptures form door pulls and clothing hooks in the fitting rooms
The four-storey, glass-vaulted double arcade is located in the city centre, close to other landmarks like the Duomo and the Teatro alla Scala.
The new Bottega store is the latest to open under Blazy since he took the reigns of the luxury brand in 2021, following locations on London’s Sloane Street and the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
The new store is located in the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade
For the brand’s Spring Summer 2023 runway show, Bottega Veneta collaborated with Italian designer Gaetano Pesce, who envisioned a colourful resin-covered floor and 400 bespoke cotton-and-resin chairs for the set.
Pesce later went on to create a pair of handbags for the brand, which were designed to suggest different bucolic landscapes.
Valencian design studio Masquespacio has completed a dine-in restaurant for takeaway sushi chain Ichi Station in Milan, with interiors designed to resemble a futuristic spaceship.
Set in a historic building in the Brera district, the chain’s latest outpost builds on the same travel and transport concept established across its other outlets – including eight in Milan and another in Turin.
Masquespacio has designed Ichi Station’s Brera outpost
But Masquespacio wanted to take this idea to the next level for the new restaurant by drawing on the visual language of sci-fi and space tourism.
“We proposed approaching the travel concept as a trip to the future,” said Masquespacio co-founder Christophe Penasse.
“When you enter Ichi, it’s like entering a capsule-like spaceship travelling through light, where you will disconnect from reality in order to get in touch with the food.”
Customers can pick up orders at the takeaway counter
Masquespacio completely redeveloped the layout of the 80-square-metre site – previously another restaurant – creating a central dining area along with a tunnel where diners can observe some of the sushi-making process.
A pick-up bar close to the entrance was added to separate the circulation routes of take-away customers and diners.
The dining area is housed in a cylindrical tunnel
The tunnel motif was developed as a way to express the idea of travel and make a reference to Japan without falling into cliches.
“Some elements were incorporated to remind the customer of Japan, like the huge lighting circles, although we tried to avoid making typical references to Japan such as using wooden structures,” Penasse explained.
The tunnel motif also informed the circular and cylindrical details that pop up throughout the space across seat backs, bar stools and decorative elements such as the circular feature light in the main dining area.
“The shapes and forms give the project the futuristic look that it needed,” the designer said.
Diners can also watch sushi being prepared at the counter
Masquespacio opted for a simple and restrained material palette that includes glass and micro-cement, which was used along with fully integrated tables and seating to create a seamless look reminiscent of a spaceship.
The restaurant’s custom-made furniture brings in another reference to transport design tropes. “You can recognise it as a reinterpretation of the seating in a station and especially on a train,” Penasse explained.
LED light panels are integrated into the walls, ceilings and table tops
The interior is finished in neutral shades of beige and off-white but is cast in different vivid colours thanks to the LED lighting system that is integrated into the walls, ceilings and even the table tops.
The lights alternate between shades of blue, green, purple and peach at variable speeds and, according to Penasse, create a veritable “explosion of colour”.
The toilets are finished in contrasting navy blue
Although based in Spain, Masquespacio has completed a number of projects in Italy in recent years.
Among them are two colour-block restaurants for fast-food chain Bun – a blue-and-green interior in Turin and a green-and-purple version in Milan.
Creative studio Spacemen looked to biophilic design principles to construct a tree-like installation covered in moss, which forms the centrepiece of a flagship outlet for luxury leather brand Braun Büffel in Malaysia.
Described by Shanghai-based Spacemen as a store that straddles an art gallery and a laboratory, the studio wanted to create an interior that would attract a younger audience and serve as “an abstract oasis” in Putrajaya’s IOI Mall.
Spacemen designed the store interior for bag brand Braun Büffel
Central to this design is an oversized, organic-shaped sculpture clad in preserved flat moss, ball moss and lichen that is suspended from an illuminated disc in the middle of the shop.
A rounded table clad in the same plants was positioned directly below to complete the installation. It also doubles as a plinth for Braun Büffel leather bags, which are displayed sparsely across the store like museum artefacts.
It is characterised by a central moss-covered sculpture
The sculpture takes cues from biophilic design – a concept that encourages a closer connection between humans and nature when creating interior spaces.
“The form was designed to seem as though it is sprouting from the ground towards the ceiling – towards the sun – hence why we integrated the membrane lighting ceiling above it, just like how it would grow out of a beaker in a mad scientist’s lab towards natural light,” explained Spacemen founder Edward Tan.
“We envisioned an otherworldly concept akin to something out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie,” he told Dezeen.
A green onyx feature wall was placed at the back of the store
Tan said that Spacemen adopted a “maximal minimalism” approach when creating the store interiors, in an attempt to challenge the neutral shapes and colours often associated with luxury.
Throughout the shop, lime plaster walls and bright white terrazzo floors are interrupted by various ornate display units and shelves magnified by floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
This cabinetry is made from decadent slabs of swirly orange onyx and jade marble, some of which are topped with glass vitrines that reveal small leather goods.
Spacemen placed a green onyx feature wall at the back of the store, which sits behind furniture including a bespoke curved bench created from the same material as well as a custom oak armchair.
Bespoke seating creates a waiting area for customers
Explaining the decision to incorporate biophilic design into the Braun Büffel outlet, Tan said, “I think with the pandemic, people have taken to appreciating nature a lot more than before.”
“This is especially true for people living in big cities where they live in apartments and are confined to office cubicles all the time, and do not have access to nature and greenery as much as they should.”
“Therefore it has become a new form of luxury to be able to afford lush greenery and gardens indoors,” he concluded.
Green and orange hues add colourful accents to the space
Other retailers featuring similar designs include a store in Seattle for beauty brand Glossier with a mossy mushroom-covered mound and a Celine boutique in Paris that is characterised by large expanses of brass and marble.
American studio Eskew Dumez Ripple has used features of vernacular architecture in creative ways to form a sustainable, multipurpose school building.
The Home Building is part of the Thaden School, a private school in Bentonville, Arkansas, that serves students in grades six to 12.
Rainwater is collected and stored in a pond, or “water lab”, at the Thaden School. Photo is by Tim Hursley
With a focus on learning by doing, students engage in activities such as filmmaking, constructing bicycles, and growing and preparing food.
The school is backed by the Walton Family Foundation, which is led by the founders of the retail giant Walmart.
The school’s 26-acre (10-hectare) campus was master-planned by Eskew Dumez Ripple – a studio based in New Orleans, Louisiana – in collaboration with local firm Marlon Blackwell Architects, landscape architects Andropogon and engineering firm CMTA.
The team took cues from the area’s pastoral heritage for the architecture. Photo is by Dero Sanford
Eskew Dumez Ripple was tasked with designing the Home Building – a 34,000-square-foot (3,159-square-metre) facility that holds a dining hall, teaching kitchen, bookstore, library and lounge/study spaces.
“The Home Building serves as both the social and spiritual center for students,” the architects said.
Eskew Dumez Ripple added a study room to the project. Photo is by Dero Sanford
While designing the facility, the team took cues from the area’s pastoral heritage, including its vernacular architecture.
“The design reconciles seemingly contradictory notion: lofty ambitions for the building’s design with the humble nature of local, vernacular architecture,” the firm said.
A gabled, slatted canopy made of poplar wood features in the dining room. Photo is by Tim Hursley
Zigzag in plan, the wood-framed building stretches across the site, bending at several points to create porches and courtyards.
Facades are clad in shiplap cedar siding and board-and-batten siding made of white, fibre-cement Hardie panels.
Facades are clad in shiplap cedar siding. Photo is by Tim Hursley
The building’s different parts are topped with either single-slope or gabled roofs, all of which are covered with standing seam metal.
Within the building, the team used basic finishes such as concrete flooring and white-painted sheetrock, and incorporated special accents like custom millwork in the study hall and a live-edge wooden table in the teaching kitchen.
Eskew Dumez Ripple used basic finishes within the facility. Photo is by Dero Sanford
At the heart of the facility is the dining room, which rises to 38 feet (12 metres) at its highest point and features a glazed wall. Hung from large, exposed trusses is a gabled, slatted canopy made of poplar wood.
“The design employs common materials and methods in uncommon ways,” the team said.
The building has a number of sustainable features, including low-flow plumbing fixtures, a geothermal well and an energy recovery wheel.
Rainwater is collected and stored in a pond, or “water lab”, that serves as a teaching tool for students. The landscape is filled with native species like prairie grass and pecan trees.
The building has a number of sustainable features. Photo is by Tim Hursley
“Sustainability is placed at the forefront of the students’ education, and the landscape functions as a botanical textbook rife with plants that represent a microcosm of the region’s native species,” the team said.
With plans to install a photovoltaic array in the future, the building is designed to achieve an Energy Use Intensity score of 23. A score of 25 or less for a school building indicates that the building is “zero energy ready”, according to the architects.
Thaden School building is located in Arkansas. Photo is by Dero Sanford
The Home Building at Thaden School was a recipient of the 2022 AIA Architecture Awards.
Other projects there include the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, designed by Sadie Architects, and a co-working, dining and recreational venue by Brand Bureau and Modus Studio that is located within a former industrial building.
