Architect：Praxis d'Architecture

Location：Beijing, China; | ;

Project Year：2014

Category：Shops

The owner of the shoe store was at the beginning of establishing her business, and rented this 13 square meter space. It was after the lease was signed that she was informed that the space would be demolished soon and she will be compensated for another bigger space. Without much choices, she decided to start to use the space as soon as possible. Such situation required our design for this space to be very economical and fast to built. Under such condition, we imagine the shoe shelves to be self supporting, movable and ready for re-assembling. It is an installation rather than a interior fixture attached to the wall ceiling. It allows to be moved to a bigger space, and becomes an Independent furniture. In this way the waste could be kept minimum.

To make the shoe shelves movable, the major material needs to be light weight and easy to cut. We finally chose MDF board. There are 55 vertical panels, each cut out with a curved edge and a notch, placed against back boards to form a continuous curved surface with a notch space for shoe display. Each shoe stand has a light box above. The notch provides a space allowing display of a minimum 60 pairs of shoes.

The lighting design of the shop did not apply the commonly seen spot lights. Instead, ambient light comes from behind a translucent acrylic panel flushed with ceiling, and intensified light for shoes comes from a 5-watt energy efficient light bulb enclosed in a light box on top of each shoe stand. Shoe storage and sitting are combined to become a movable furniture in the middle of the space with a shape that echos that of the ceiling light, providing a passage between the sitting and the shelves.

The MFD board is 1.8cm in thickness, which becomes 2cm after paint is applied. When designing details, we applied the 2cm as a module. The light boxes and shoe stands all recessed inward or upward for 2cm against the vertical panels, giving a clean and consistent look to the details where vertical and horizontal panels meet.

The 3D surface of the shoe shelves came from curves of woman’s body. Heels represent women sexiness. To express a space belonging to women is to express the nature of women. The true beauty of a woman comes from her inherent ability to bring life into the world. The continuous curvy surface and the notch of shoe shelves represent womb of a woman that conceives lives and provides safety and comfort.

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