SHOWROOM RUSLAN BAGINSKIY

Architect - Rina LovkoLocation - KyivType - ShowroomArea - 85 sq mYear - 2020Photo - Yevhenii Avramenko

ABOUT | BEFORE CONSTRUCTION | DESIGN | VINTAGE ELEMENTS | HISTORY | TOTAL 

ABOUT

Ruslan Baginskiy is a famous Ukrainian milliner whose headwear brand is known all over the world. The Baginskiy Showroom is located in Kyiv, Ukraine, at 33 Pushkinska Street in a historical building built 1895-1896. It was important to undertake a renovation of the store, and Ruslan approached the RinaLovko studio for the project.

BEFORE CONSTRUCTION

Whilst Ruslan Baginskiy's team is originally from Lviv, the cultural capital of western Ukraine, they live and work in Kyiv, and consider Paris their “third” home. This formed the starting point of the project for the client - to combine the atmosphere of these amazing cities and to transfer it to the project space. Thus, as is typical in European cities, it was decided to to create a showroom in the style of a designer residential apartment.

DESIGN

To the left of the entrance hall is the kitchen, storage and meeting room. This room is designed for comfortable communication between VIP-clients and Ruslan's team.

In the centre of the room attention is drawn to a custom-made elegant wooden chandelier «Spirits» by Vasya Grublyak.

Along the wall there is a console and shelf for accessories and goods from seasonal collections.

Returning to the entrance hall there are shelves with goods and cubes for the presentation of collections.

A little further on, we have the main room where the visual emphasis is on the central mirror. The mirror makes the room bigger and allows customers to see themselves in full height while trying on and choosing headwear.

It reflects the cubes and shelves that fill the space of the showroom.

The cubes are custom-made and decorated with lime plaster, visually reminiscent of Lviv houses covered with limestone. Among the cubes, one can find marble blocks that Rina and Ruslan found in a marble retail warehouse.

We also painted the shelves and walls in ash tint, which are then emphasized by warm lighting.  In order to make a unique texture, we added crumbs of quartz to the paint.

A central focus in our design is the display table with a textured surface, on which the product stands out. When we designed the project we calculated the number of hats and the surface area required for which to make compositions from collections.

Rina Lovko, architect and owner of the Lovko Design studio, went to Lviv to be inspired by the old streets and beautiful premises. On this trip in Lviv it became clear what colours, tones and details would saturate the showroom.

The room we worked with was filled with history. To retain the old time we kept the existing molding and invited an artist to enhance its features by drawing the depth of the patterns’ shadows and produce a worn-out effect. The inherited parquet floor was restored and covered with a transparent lacquer. We emphasised the arched windows with smoothing corners as it was done in the past.

VINTAGE ELEMENTS

Vintage furniture was also found for the project, which further complements the idea of bringing the visitor to an old European city. There is black armchairs made by Lviv carpenters according to old drawings, a vintage brass mirror and chest of drawers brought from Switzerland, and a bench in the hallway found at a flea market in France.

HISTORY

The showroom itself is located in the historic part of Kyiv.

The main facade has a symmetrical composition, decorated with rustic wood. Four half-columns of the Corinthian order with decorative cartouches rest on pedestals with brackets. Above, at the level of the 4th floor, there are sculpted vases on each of the semi-columns. At the level of the 1st floor, there are semi-column brackets decorated with lion mascarons.

TOTAL

To sum up, this project can be called a collaboration of two design studios. Thanks to a professional and friendly cooperation between Rina and Ruslan, a wonderful showroom space has been realized, and to where we are thrilled to invite you!