A retail annex and client lounge for venerable fashion retailer H Lorenzo
The room is tall and narrow and I decided to use its height to my advantage. To give it a sense of vastness I painted it stark white and then separated the walls from the ceiling with a string of fluorescents along the top left corner. Those lights are reflected in a full-length horizontal mirror that runs above eye level. And they are paralleled by another string of lights that are mounted underneath a raised white walkway.
These rushing lines draw you into the space, and coalesce at the store's focal point: a reclaimed-wood cash wrap. A row of fluorescent bars are embedded along its façade, a nod to minimalist light artist Dan Flavin.
The steel bases of the display tables don't “support” the thick chunks of wood but instead wrap around them. As though the wood’s rising up, straining at its metal holds. These tables and their accompanying racks are raised above the ground by a white walkway, which rests on top of a strip of glowing fluorescents. In this way the heaviest materials rise upwards, supported by lighter and lighter elements. An inverse of the usual store design where fluorescents shine down on heavy displays.
The client lounge is lifted above the store. The ground is cut out and paneled in glass like a cockpit window. A Nemadji pot that reminds me of an abstract graffiti tag rests on a bolted aluminum table, reminiscent of a jet wing. A machine age Jielde lamp casts light on a midcentury patio sofa, which I’ve upholstered and brought inside.
A steel leaf chair by Rupert Oliver is suspended, above the ground. An aluminum bar cart holds an espresso machine, and pottery I had custom made by Ray Morales. Two antique paint sprayers that look like science fiction ray guns complete the sense of jet setting both forward and back in time.
A French bergere chair, is, in the style of Lee Broom, wrapped in neon.
Just hanging in the leaf chair. The leather is suspended above the metal and it's amazingly comfortable.
