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Architects: RENESA Architecture Design Interiors Studio
- Area: 1300 ft²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Niveditaa Gupta
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Manufacturers: Saint-Gobain, Asian Paints, Dorma India, Hettich, Merino, Ultratech
Text description provided by the architects. Enclosed within a rustic red terracotta brick, studio Renesa’s new project is not your ordinary showroom. Launching their first showroom in Amritsar, India, the client’s provided us a simple objective – to create a space that instantly felt comfortable and familiar that would draw people to the place.
Steering away from the traditional showroom approach, we sought to contextualize the space as a gallery that provides the consumer with the experience of viewing the products by presenting them in an engaging setting. The design is such that it allows the customers to interact with the products through the various pockets created and get a sense of their inherent quality.
Spatially, the approach involves a series of adjunctions; tied together by red bricks that set the tone for the brand’s identity. The plan poses a rectangular volume, with arched niches that were created to include natural light into the site. The project experiments with the very idea of space, pushing the boundary of the showroom to act as a gallery where the sculptures and the products become a part of the design.
Side-stepping the idea of a layout that conforms to its shape, the final concept removes and cuts through the entire space creating a maneuvering pattern across the store. Simple curves and diagonals are interspersed to create receptacles of the display. These different shapes forming the spatial ideology, dissect and resurrect the design forming a frame for the products. Essentially, a home décor store, the semi-enclosed volumes offer multiple access points overlapped with the monolithic structures that act as the gallery elements.
In terms of materiality, the raw concrete texturization resonates with the terracotta bricks forming a transitory space that can be curated like a gallery and showroom. The natural colors and the textural variation found in the material scheme forms spaces that can be curated according to their products.
Our main focus was to create an indigenous and deconstructed feeling which is in a state of constant change and experimentation much like a gallery would be. Studio Renesa infuses the visitor on to the path that forms organically but is also carefully directed by the architect itself. Celebrating the prominence of brick materiality in the Indian context, the terracotta bricks adds value to the contemporary aesthetic.
