Offhand Practice designs second-hand bookshop to mimic greengrocer
Utilised textbooks are displayed in supermarket-type crates at the Deja Vu Recycle Retailer in Shanghai, which neighborhood studio Offhand Apply has designed to counter the “shabby” impression related with second-hand outlets.
The shop, which also carries pre-owned trend, is positioned on the 1st and next floor of a three-storey setting up on Shanghai’s buzzy Anfu Street.
On the inside, Chinese architecture studio Offhand Exercise hoped to generate a calm buying surroundings despite the massive amount of items on present, which features far more than 2,000 items of clothing.
With this goal, the studio set out to mimic the expertise of likely to a greengrocer by exhibiting clothes and books on shelves usually utilised to keep fruits and veggies, while giving all merchandise equal prominence no matter of rate.
“Selecting up books in the way of finding up vegetables and fruits offers a experience of enriching the religious basket,” Offhand Follow explained.
On the floor ground, the studio recessed the building’s entrance and framed it in cream-colored mosaic tiles to create a tiny shelter while creating the towering facade truly feel more welcoming.
A single of the main challenges for the studio was to inspire passersby to stroll through the building’s ground floor – consisting of a prolonged corridor bookended with room for mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) equipment– and climb the stairs to achieve the Deja Vu Recycle Store.
This was obtained by turning the corridor into a variety of gallery, showcasing the approach of refurbishing second-hand products.
“Getting gain of the narrowness, we discovered spatial depth by way of levels of opening,” the studio defined.
Textbooks are displayed on the building’s 1st flooring and clothing on the second. Both of those degrees have an open up-plan structure with circulation routes outlined by shelving and clothes rails.
Mosaic tiles built from stone off-cuts had been applied to form decorative wainscoting in the exact same creamy beige color as the facade, which channels 1970s Shanghai interiors.
Contrasting inexperienced tiles were being employed to frame the generous window openings exposed throughout the building’s renovation, and to kind built-in window seats.
Normal pine was utilised to kind the cashier counter, cabinets and reserve crates to increase a feeling of heat to the inside.
Offhand Follow mentioned it designed the retail store to split with damaging preconceptions about 2nd-hand merchants currently being “uninteresting, disorganised and piled with shabby objects”.
“Deja Vu Recycle Retail store breaks the stereotypical picture of a 2nd-hand store and erases the ritualistic impact of a conventional bookstore total of comprehensive-height bookshelves,” the studio reported.
The retailer was not too long ago been shortlisted for substantial retail inside of the 12 months at the 2022 Dezeen Awards.
Other assignments in the functioning consist of a surrealist pop-up store made by Random Studio for vogue brand Jacquemus and a thought store that Schemata Architects has made for an outdoor brand in South Korea.
The images is by Hu Yanyun.
