Excerpt: Boutique and Barbershop is a retail space designed by the architectural firm ATELIERDACOSTA. When we first visited the corner space and heard the program description from the client, a clear motto came: the program could quickly be settled by designing only a kind of a solo device, a cabinet, an apparatus of wood or/and metal, placed inside that space. The whole piece is the machine that concentrates the productiveness to serve the space it defines and where the consumption takes place.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect] When we first visited the corner space and heard the program description from the client, a clear motto came: the program could quickly be settled by designing only a kind of a solo device, a cabinet, an apparatus of wood or/and metal, placed inside that space.
The functions asked in the program could be arranged in two big groups in terms of scale: one of those consuming open-spaces or subspaces inside it preferably, but all above ten square meters (barber space, boutique area), and another of those like the fitting rooms, exhibitors, small warehouse, counter, most of them transformable into niches spaces. That led us to keep the existing masonry as found (the bathroom was kept) and adjust the device that would host the fewer scale objects, even if obeying a recognizable structural grid, helping the wood and metal construction take place.
This piece, to be placed in the core of the store plot, backing up to the rear walls, released the facade perimeter and moulded the space in-between it and this perimeter. Therefore, the apparatus should be designed as if it landed on a continuous floor and ceiling. The piece can be divided into three parts, from the heaviest to the lightest: the structure in wood, creating the primary and regular support, the semi-open metallic mesh to host the warehouse and mechanical room with irregular outer limits and the HVAC piping in inox, expelling out of its borders even more.
The whole piece is the machine that concentrates the productiveness to serve the space it defines and where the consumption takes place. Establishing the relation with the public space around a street and a square, the heavy outer shell of stone and windows remains with no classic showcase. Instead, it is punctuated with bold reddish awnings and big industrial white lighting lamps.
The second layer, defined by a device offset from the heaviest, is perceived from the outside as an interior within an interior. It comprises cosy niches for showcasing, while the lighting is relatively warm and golden. Between the two shells, people deambulate in the “threshold” space, between white and goldish; stone and wood; in and out; public and private.
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