Embedded Files
LACOSA blends uniquely spatial and sculptural elements to create a highly expressive, embracing, and inspiring experience.
LACOSA aspires to be more than just another fancy boutique. Its ambition is to become the logical and physical extension of luxury brands' digital presence.
It is a space for the most coveted fashion labels, installations, events, and personal shopping appointments, as well the home of Calgary's most advanced fully digital micro apartments.
Experiential Design has been around for the last few years now where showrooms are designed to emulate a theme park with a lot of effects to motivate people to buy. Generally, the model rooms are styled according to the target customer group, down to the interiors and furnishings, and the presentation rooms use models and videos to convey the appeal of the products.
However, it did not seem like the most sustainable solution to me because if you take a step back, you will see that it is built and demolished in just a few years, and the layout is repeatedly changed and renovated to suit the situation during the sales period.
Based on this common awareness of the problem with the client, I knew I had to rethink the very culture of experiential showrooms.
My goal was to create a general solution that would become the new standard for the future, rather than an ad hoc individual solution.
LACOSA is Italian for "The Thing/The Object". It presents a rhetorical device, an antithesis to experiences.
LACOSA reminds the customer that designer brands are mere things/objects that come and go, as they would in a pop-up retail space, signalizing that the experiences the customers will have are in focus and will stay behind.
Cross fields and Integration: Not just Art, Architecture, and Technology.
LACOSA's store design is neither art, architecture nor technology but an elegant synthesis of the most beloved elements of all three, creating a new hybridization of unique and inspiring immersive experiences.
This project aims to promote excellence through experiential, immersive and exhibitive design generated from a dialogue between luxe materials and futuristic inventions, by blending together the world of high-fashion splendor with the style-obsessed, youth culture.
Mixed Use Spaces:
High-End Retail: A space where exclusive fashion & accessories will come to life in a “mix and match” style of carefully selected/curated designer goods in a museum-like setting, while offering private shopping experiences.
Restaurant/Grab-Go Bar: A space where visitors are encouraged to engage in conversation, purchase food items to take on the go or order a meal into the clubhouse.
Digital Microapartments: A set of pods used as short-term accommodation for commuters or tourists, allowing the mixed use space to be more "dynamic", and hence more attractive for residents.
Floor 1:
Over two floors, it has been conceived to offer a brick-and-mortar retail experience that interfaces intuitively with our increasingly digital behaviors. Clothing can be selected online and shipped to the space where a stylist will be available to assist shoppers.
It should be easy to change the layout, expand and reconstruct after the completion of construction. The flow of design, construction, and demolition should be sustainable. No over-finishing except in the model room. In order to achieve these goals, the prefabricated structure was left intact and the space was wrapped with light Kaynemaile parametric curtains. By carefully examining the sheen, curves, and color overlap of the curtains, we were able to create an elegant and light space that does not feel like a rugged prefabricated structure.
Floor 2:
As part of LACOSA's retail experience and club experience, the second floor houses a cafe and carefully curated rotating brand art exhbition, which will be continuously activated with installations, lectures, and other programming—currently, historical significance and design philosophies of brands such as Gucci, Loewe, Louis Vuitton and more are on display.
The layout of the space can be changed flexibly according to the purpose of the brands exhibited. The overall design gives a rational yet dreamy picture thanks to the novel material reinterpretation and precise fabrication. I made sure to let the subtle elements do the talk.
Light matters. Color matters. Translucency matters. Geometry matters...
The lightweight nature of the mesh is one of the I was so excited about the material. It can be used in place of steel sheets or mesh dramatically reducing the static load on buildings – not to mention the installation times – reducing project costs. The mesh is also extremely effective at keeping the sunlight out – while keeping visibility clear. It reduces the solar energy entering a building by 70%. The mesh is UV stabilized, so won’t melt or go brittle, its fire-resistant and stronger but lighter than glass.
The mesh is fully recyclable and Kaynemaile has adopted a cradle-to-cradle ethos meaning the mesh can be recycled in-house due to its virgin composite make up. The colours used in the mesh are also carbon-based, meaning they too can be stripped out (using low-energy processes).
Life Through Movement...
The custom design of parametric furniture using wood acts as an element of art and architecture while creating functions such as seating, display or storage.
I was looking for practical, dependable ways of bringing abstract shapes into reality. One of the most attractive qualities of parametric-style works is their innate ability to capture shapes that people aren’t used to seeing. While not imperative to the parametric style, my solution to fabricating these polymorphic shapes was to use sectioned laser cut pieces of wood.
Vertical Section 1:
Vertical Section 2:
Perspective Impressions
The finishes are a representation of a trip in space and time. The light tones are ideal to create wider and brighter environments, for a timeless style. The harmony of the elements creates an atmosphere highly refined and expresses lightness also in the contrast with different materials. Fabric, leather, steel, wood and natural stone, all in their different shades and intensity of colours play in a game of a mutual switch off and on, by enhancing and matching to each other with sensational material’s contrasts. The different chromatic combinations highlight exclusivity and luxury reflected into a contemporary time, always more and more eclectic, contaminated and in the search of a bespoken elegance.
Materials, Finishes & Furniture
Report abuse