Carbon Studio

Carbon Studio triggers autonomy

Confetti - accessible edge

With the first multibrand concept store for Confetti, Carbon Studio created a premium, but personal shopping experience. The store is a hub for the local community and offers an inspirational, rich sensory environment – the essentials for contemporary brick-and-mortar retail. The highly textured space has a modular design, made of a sustainable mix of re-used and easy-to-recycle materials.

Confetti is an upper-mid to premium mens’ multibrand store, a small, 250m2 department store frequented by the local fashionista scene. Because of its’ role in the local scene, hospitality is one of the main drivers for the design of the store. The owners run the store themselves, curate the collection and host on-site events. Hence, a well-equipped bar is positioned centrally in the space and serves as a hub for social encounters and personal service.

The spatial setup is a sequence of neutrally toned gallery areas and two large interventions - the curved terracotta wall and the blue zone – both with an amplified materiality and use of colour. The gallery areas are a toolbox of modular aluminium profiles and perforated sheets – easy to reconfigure. Additionally two high modular shelving units with vertical lighting are added to the gallery set

Over the years, the building had become a patchwork of several extensions and restorations. Especially the right side of the space is a clutter of walls, columns, staircases, etc. Now, a terracotta wall smoothly winds itself around the chaos and organizes the flow into the store.
Round shapes, ranging in scale from architecture to furniture details, create a soft flow through the store and balance the bare, highly textured materiality of the space.
Recycled and locally sourced materials are dominant in the design. For example, the wall-facing luminaires are recycled from suspended office ceilings and locally recycled, low-grade aluminium is used for the shelving. The curved wall is cladded with leftover lots of terracotta floor tiles - with the back side facing forward to hide mismatches, but also to amplify the textural qualities of the material. When new materials are used, they’re designed for reconfiguration to extend their life-cycle, and for easy separation to ensure after-life recycling.

COEF Leiden - soft modernism

A pleasant men’s department store for premium multi brand Coef Men.
In contrast with the brutalist concrete hull, refined circular elements are introduced, resulting in a clear-cut interior with a balanced atmosphere.

Building:
The store has a façade of twenty meter wide, at the Haarlemmerstraat in Leiden, and is embedded in a street full of small ornamented shop facades. Nine concrete columns dominate the square 400m2 concrete hull.

Concept:
Physical shopping should be a rich physical experience in which your senses are activated.
• Coef men is a curated men’s department store centred around personal attention and quality service. A welcoming gesture is made with the wide space around bar, cash desk, seating elements and fitting area. Lavish material use quality and carefully designed and executed details further set the atmosphere for the high level of service.
• Maximum contrast between the rough, cold, and orthogonal concrete hull and the warm, refined, circular interior elements intensify the shopping experience.

Facade:
The twenty meter wide facade consists of glass alone, turning the store into a display case. In every window segment another department of the store can be viewed.

Interior:
Contrast has been sought not only with the sober concrete hull, but also in luxury levels of furniture elements. The premium collection needs no more than a modest socle, but the zones for people have been lavishly materialized.
An undulating twenty-five meter long maple wooden wall passes through the concrete hull that was stripped to its constructive essence. The wall starts as sneaker wall with 75 illuminated alcoves integrated. It flows into the fitting area, which is the most warm and intimate zone of the store. The undulating wall with integrated doors separates the public and private parts of the fitting zone.
A flexible and minimalistic furniture system is developed for the integration of mirrors, seats and accessory presentations. The concrete columns carry the large round presentation plateaus as if they are trays
.
Result:
With this project Carbon Studio and KUUB aim for a shop interior that celebrates physical shopping as a personal, social, tactile immersive experience. They utilize the benefits of the store location and quality of the existing structure in a design strategy with real materials and a flexible building system. Resulting in a comfortable shopping experience with clear-cut architecture

Columbia customization – the fun of violence

Columbia has a strong reputation in outdoor performance wear and is very credible in this market. For the Zalando Bread & Butter Berlin B2C Event, the brand expanded its reach to the world of lifestyle as well, which brought exposure to a new audience.
The Zalando BBB was a great platform to reach a lifestyle savvy audience in Europe. With the recent resurgence of sportswear and outdoor in the fashion world, it allowed for a natural bridge to tell the rich stories and innovation of Columbia, but with a fresh modern twist.

We were briefed to come up with a brand activation that could create PR buzz for Columbia in this event. The idea had to be smart, create impact and spread-ability for a relatively humble budget. From past experiences, we knew that most brands had bigger investments with larger stands and spectacular digital experiences. So we were looking to do the opposite.

When everyone in the fair went digital, we chose to go analogue. We felt that there was something irresistible about creating a stand that people could have a hands-on visceral experience. Like going to a fun fair, no one could resist a paintball shooting range Inspired by that idea, we created and carefully engineered a fully functional catapult system that allowed participants to customize t-shirts through shooting paint.
During the fair, sure enough, it attracted a lot of attention and people started queuing up to join. Equipped with multiple GoPros attached in the shooting cage, we were able to share the experience through various social channels.

Client: Columbia
Location: Bread&Butter, Berlin, GER
project: Activation at Zalando Bread&Butter Expo. Identity, Concept, Design, Engineering
Size: 80m2 m²
Delivery: Sept 2018
Collaborators: Superlarge
Photography: Lesley Weitjes

we are triggered by content, not by size

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