Keiji Ashizawa design and Delinium Arquitectes have completed “Tohoku Standard”, a souvenir shop specializing in crafts and handmade goods from the Tohoku region of Japan. The store design integrates furniture from Ishinomaki Laboratory (design firm local to Tohoku) for its new retail location in Sendai. Led by Ashizawa Keiji, the design team proposed an interior space with store fixtures made from Ishinomaki Laboratory products. The individual units of the furniture can also be sold as products in the Tohoku store.

Over six hundred units of the “carry stool” were combined and stacked to form a display system along the surface of the walls. Other simple pieces from the Ishinomaki Laboratory collection such as the “aa stool” and “ma series” were introduced as display platforms for the store’s merchandise. Part of the guiding concept behind the designs of Ishinomaki Laboratory products is to use basic materials and turn them into utilitarian and functional furniture.

The “Tohoku Standard” store can be described as an “experiment” in space-creation by using furniture, fully embodying the ideology of utilitarian design. Combining the simplicity and graciousness of its wooden material, the result is a space that reflects the unimposing quality of Ishinomaki Laboratory’s furniture – allowing everything in the shop to stand out beautifully.

Design: Keiji Ashizawa design and Delinium Arquitectes
Photography: Takumi Ota Photography

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/tohoku-standard-japan-08-25-2017/