Designer: Nihil Estudio
Project: D Brand Store
Location: Valencia, Spain
Size: 128,18 m2
Photographs: UKEMOTION
As if it were a shoe box, D Brand Store is presented as a “box” that by itself contains and exposes. The double skins generates a volume that from the façade, extending it to the end of this shoe shop. The entire store is flooded with black and expands to the outside. Color that absorbs and contains, allowing to generate contrasts and a game between volumes that enhanced by the help of light, serve as an exhibitor for the different elements that must be shown here.
From Nihil Estudio thought and executed this store thinking about the main element to expose, the shoe. That is why the symbiosis of the shoe box serves as the main element in this intervention.
“Stepping hard” could be the motto of this store in which the base begins with the feet. One of the foundations of the human body that, comparatively to the architecture, could find certain similarity with the constructive materials in its purest state. This is how concrete, wood, ceramics and plastic are seen in their most gross or representative colors.
The showcase, like a black tunnel, absorbs the visitor and enters it into the D Brand Store. Packed with black sneakers, it generates a homogenous and black relief that breaks with the color of the exposed pieces. The intention; that everything reverberates the shoe and that only the selected pieces stand out over the others.
Upon entering the premises, several rectangular volumes open into space. With an inclination designed so that the visitor, in a simple glance, can see where the shoes are, these “volumes” or boxes, are detached from the walls to expose the product. Each of the boxes contains a material differentiation that, not only helps to visually enlarge the space, but also serves as a differentiator, since each of them has a specific purpose.
The brand intention, goes through the fact of being a store with exclusive models, which is reflected in the different exhibition boxes. This way of differentiating helps Nihil Estudio to organize spatially the D Brand Store. The concept of container and exhibition box is distributed on the premises and exposes the shoes, accessories or contains the payment area of the store. This last element appears in concrete with a small bite of the material that, in glass, allows the worker to control the entire premises without letting the space be visually cut.
On the ground floor, as if the volume was raised, there are elongated elements that, in black, mimic the space and serve users, being benches for customers or serving as support for workers. A work of volumes that is enhanced with the use of indirect light that directs in the central space, enhances the sense of spatial depth and, in the case of the display cases, serves to illuminate and give a greater breadth to the D Brand Store. Some mirrors appear behind each display, enhancing the volumetric games and giving service to the user. The dressing rooms, differ from “the black box” that makes up the premises, by the use of a textile curtain of the same color as the rest of the elements. By mimicking the space, the elements of support or customer service are shown in the same key, allowing that which stands out is only the product for sale of D Brand Store.
This interior design Project, turns a branding project. A 360º design project carried out by Nihil Estudio from the same language, in which the shoe is the protagonist.
It is therefore reflected the intention to enhance the meaning of container box and exhibitor in all areas of design work, thus appearing in the graphic design brackets that embrace and contain the name of the store itself. These brackets that act as a box, are reflected both on the facade and inside the payment box. A connection between graphic design and interior design that also appears on bags, labels, cards and the company’s own website. D Brand Store takes the box out of context and opens it onto the public in all forms of design, playing from fashion to construction material, going through all fields of design and working together as one.
