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Architects: Brinskworth
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:Louise Melchior
Text description provided by the architects. Appointed by Diesel UK to collaborate on a new 4-month pop-up store on London’s Regent St, Brinkworth and Wilson Brothers responded by capturing the essence of pop-up retail: a quick, simple and cost effective installation with big impact and a bold concept.
Working with 5,000 sq. ft. spread over two floors, Brinkworth has taken inspiration from Diesel Village, the Bassano del Grappa-based Diesel HQ, to create a series of lightweight house structures that are scattered throughout the space.
The houses are constructed from proprietary greenhouse kits with a variety of different applied treatments and finishes that play with reflectivity, transparency and solidity to create a series of diverse destinations. The treatments range from a mirrored iridescent finish, smoked tints and two-way mirror, to recycled plastic sheeting and scaffold timber board claddings.
The cladding and treatments applied to the greenhouses reinforce the recognisable archetypal house shape, which also forms the basis of a 2-D Village graphic icon developed by Oscar Wilson to sit with Diesel's logo in the branding of Diesel Village.
Oscar Wilson of Wilson Brothers explains: “For this project, the pictorial element grew from a single house into a small group of linear houses, referencing the original framework and overlapping views of the structures inside the store.”
Within the store, each of the houses represents a specific area of focus, highlighting different product categories, forming the changing room spaces, defining the cash wrap area and as a backdrop for window display.
The strategic placement of each house encourages a sense of discovery, intrigue and interaction with the space. The focal point, Diesel’s ‘Denim Area’, is nestled within the cluster of structures.
The walls, floor and ceiling of the menswear area on the ground floor have been painted a dark grey, leaving the clad structures to reflect, fade in to and contrast the surrounding space. The womenswear level above has been treated with a pale grey allowing the same materials to display different qualities as the light interacts with them, and travels through the cladding
Murrayat Brinkworth says: “The pop-up store is a chance to work efficiently to create something interesting and impactful. With Diesel Village it was the opportunity to create something very big, very quickly and to distill the brand values into something visually stimulating that still works as a successful shopping experience.”
Brinkworth is one of the UK’s leading creative retail design agencies, specialising in creative brand strategy and interior, graphic, architectural and environmental design. Established by Adam Brinkworth in 1990 the company has been responsible for the commercial success of many premier global fashion and retail brands, and for launching many of the high street’s most contemporary store designs, both within the UK and internationally.
Clients include Dabbous, Supreme, Nike, Heineken, All Saints, UVU, Karen Millen, Rapha, Ben Sherman, Converse, Carl Freedman Gallery, Dinos Chapman and Ministry of Sound.
