Luxury fashion designer Neil Barret’s Shop in Shop by Zaha Hadid Architects

British architectural practice Zaha Hadid have completed five contemporary boutiques for Milan-based English fashion designer Neil Barrett. Completed in 2013, the luxury boutiques can be found in Seoul and Hong Kong.

The ‘Shop in Shop’ concept for Neil Barrett was based on a singular, cohesive project that was divided into sixteen separate pieces. Specific pieces have then been selected and installed into each of the four Neil Barrett ‘Shop in Shop’s in Seoul, and also into the Hong Kong shop; creating a unique display landscape within each store. Each separate element acts as a piece in a puzzle of the original ensemble, ensuring each shop maintains a relationship to the defined whole and with the other Neil Barrett Shop in Shop locations.

The pieces have been carved and moulded from the original solid as pairs that define each other to create an artificial landscape that unfolds multiple layers for display. The emerging forms engage the same design principles adopted for the Neil Barrett Flagship Store in Tokyo; the characteristic peeling, twisting and folding of surfaces has been extended to incorporate double-curvatures and rotations.

The display landscape is a flexible modular system that allows multiple arrangements and adaptations according to specific locations and multiple conditions, developing an original space at every location. The pieces can be used individually or in conjunction with others from the collection to suit the differing scale and spaces of each shop, with each piece able to display shoes, bags or accessories.

The Shop in Shop concept continues the geometries of the Tokyo Flagship Store, developing a dialogue between the Cartesian language of the existing envelope walls with the sculptural, smooth finish of each piece. This contrast of materials in combination with the formal language of the design plays with these visual and tactile characteristics and is further accentuated by the black polished floor.

Zaha Hadid Architects and Neil Barrett are continuing their collaboration on further Shop in Shop concepts to open in Beijing,
Shanghai and Seoul – so watch this space!

Images courtesy of Virgile Simon Bertrand

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