RAMOPRIMO just realized in Beijing the new flagship store for British-Chinese underwear fashion brand cottonREPUBLIC. The project features a large basket-like spatial envelope organized as an increasing overlapping of five rings composed by a succession of colorful diagonal iron rods. The structural pattern was originally inspired by the interlaced timber partition screens of traditional Chinese architecture, but it has been hybridized with a palette of shiny colors: yellow, red, orange and pink.

The resulting structure is floating in the space surprising and surrounding the customers, like an oversized patterned women’s tights, a wrap-around roller coaster track, or the bent portion of a psychedelic Eiffel tower. This very peculiar spatial solution was also inspired by the nature of the space: a small store completely open on two sides to the shopping mall public corridor. The challenge was about choosing between some display elements on the show windows, visible from outside, or a traditional shelving system where to show products inside the shop, without having to sacrifice the advantages of either.

The choice to design a large perimeter structure was answering these issues. It was also dictated by the need to have a long shelf where placing colorful packaging boxes, alligned and sorted by type and visible on both sides. The large attracting installation combined with all display elements will enhance the spatial and sensorial shopping experience. The starting concept for the floor was to create a large continous action painting made of white, grey and black resin.

While dropping the first colours on the 60 square meter canvas, we suddently realized that the slow movement of the white background, still liquid, was reacting in a very interesting way, randomly creating un-expected effects of fade and fusion. Once dried, the merging of black and grey spots reminds to the Chinese black and white “shan shui” ink paintings. A large illuminating ceiling is diffusing a soft light from above reducing the use of visible spotlights, that usually punctuate the ceiling of fashion shops in malls.

Functional objects, like cashier counter and vertical displays for the brand’s collection of socks, have been designed as simple white boxes randomly places around the space. White wooden varnished discs, provided of a magnet on a side, work as supports for the underwear products and can be freely attached to the colored iron shelves to create a ever-changing display system that can be flexibly customized according to needs.

Design and photography: Ramoprimo