Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Boutique Runway by CLS Architetti

Italian design studio CLS Architetti have completed a shop in Vietnam with undulating fins and a giant mirrorball.

Called Boutique Runway, the wavy profiles cover the walls and ceiling.

The giant mirrorball houses a VIP room.

Inside this domed room is a ceiling that is completely covered with plaster roses.

Here’s some more information from the architects:


Boutique Runway, Ho Chi Minh city

In Ho Chi Minh city has newly opened the Runway boutique, a over 1000 square meters contemporary store, fully dedicated to luxury.designed by the Italian architecture office CLS architetti.

The concept of contrasts and opposites has been the core of the project for the atmospheres, the space and the materials.

The real luxury in tropical areas, where the hot temperature is overwhelming, is cold.

From this reality the concept of the space has been developed.

The space is like an ice cove where people can experience a path which is a metaphor of life and rebirth.

The ice cove has been built through the construction of a 3D digital model where the space is generated by subtraction and the walls are built as 298 following sections each of them with a different morphology.

To the technology of the digital project the local construction is the counterpoint that deals with the Vietnamese craftsmanship.

Each lamella is hand cut in more portions that are then tied together.

Here time and life are like suspended, the place inert, the only life trace is given by a wonderful world made up of colored insects, vestige of life.

On the path within the ice cove people discover the Cocoon: metaphor of the place of the renaissance, pulsating heart of the project, it is built like an organic shaped volume, closed, fully cladded by 12899 mirrored polished stainless steel scales.

Like, mermaid scales, synonymous of sensuality and femininity, it reflects the ice cove disorderly.

The inside of the Cocoon is warm, cozy, smooth with its dome fully covered by 8948 plaster roses and accommodates the VIP room: an exclusive, unique room, home of the Queen of ice.

The lighting in the whole project is built through opposites too: it enhances the glacial atmosphere of the outside, cold and even lights towards the warm and countered light at the Cocoon interior.

Old and contemporary Vietnam talk together within the project at different levels: within the furniture of the ice cove there are traditional stone table and seats versus the big crystal and stainless steel diamond synonymous of contemporary world.

The opposite’s language is spoken by all furnitures. Iron display tables talk together with light, white lacquered display tables, with the shelves and hanging bars floating in the space.

In this scenario the fashion collections selected and matched by the taste and the feel of Tran Thi Hoai Anh, head of Globallink, a company with monobrand boutiques in Hanoi and heading an interesting project of development, together with the selection of the most precious and wonderful furniture and objects of the western production done by CLS architetti have given life to a true Wunderkammer (Cabinets of wonder).

A double wire work that allow to cohabit the light crystals by the Austrian Lobmeyr, vases and plates decorated by the italian designer Fornasetti, the mountain printed sofa by Gaetano Pesce and the pure white porcelains by Nymphenburg, a selection of the most fashion books on art, photography and design together with the most fashion brands.