Sticks & Stones Steel & Glass: One Architect's Journey by Anthony Poon

Author:Anthony Poon [Poon, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2017-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

TO SEE AND BE SEEN: ARCHITECTURE FOR FASHION

Architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst; you need them both.

KARL LAGERFELD

A clothing store should do more than merely stock, display, and sell. The architecture of such a store should do more than be a big container with shelves and hooks.

Colleague Brooke Hodge wrote in her book and associated exhibit, Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, “Both architecture and fashion are based on the human body and on ideas of space, volume, and movement. Each functions as shelter or wrapping for the body—a mediating layer between the body and the environment—and can express personal, political, and cultural identity.”

In her 2007 exhibit at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, the comparison continues, even extending toward techniques of construction and fabrication: folding, wrapping, draping, forming, coloring, and so on.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was with the Santa Monica architecture studio KAA, Nicole Miller, a high-fashion clothing designer, commissioned us to design a retail store in Boca Raton, Florida. Nicole Miller’s creations were vividly colored and patterned, drawing inspiration from contemporary art and architecture. Not only was this high-profile client ideal for us as young architects, but so too was her project. She sought a novel architectural statement for this flagship store that in turn would be compelling enough to brand all her future locations throughout the United States.

Before I get into the specific design ideas that parallel the fashion world and architecture, let’s briefly examine the architecture industry’s typical idea of creating a physical brand for a retail space. The solution for most architects and their corporate clients, whether clothing, computers, or coffee, is to simply generate a palette of materials and fixtures, then replicate it in every upcoming store. This approach of a consistent palette offers an easy solution for a physical brand, also known as “trade dress.”

With this obvious but only somewhat effective method, a flagship store might have, for example, a palette of dark oak floors, taupe-painted walls, gray-stained cabinets, brass detailing, an accent stripe of hunter green, and a few interesting Italian light fixtures. This is the palette. This is the brand. This is the trade dress.

For each future location, whether Las Vegas, Boise, or Shanghai, the same—exactly the same—elements are installed. Offering an easily recognizable assembly of colors and materials to the consumer, this tactic establishes a company’s physical brand while causing little brain damage when a company expands and builds in new cities. In addition, meeting a known construction budget, sourcing common materials, using the same vendors, and building standardized fabrication details also offer efficiency. Heck, you might not even need to pay an architect much if you are building the same design over and over again.

Whether the store is big or small, whether the owner spends $500,000 or $50 million, whether the store is on a beach or in the woods, consistency proves to be successful.

Great, right?

Does the term “cookie cutter” come to mind?

With the flagship project for Nicole Miller, I questioned why the architectural brand for nearly all companies is created by merely replicating materials and color.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.