Project Winner

This 1,500-square-foot menswear boutique in the Toronto suburb of Woodbridge appeals to shoppers of diverse age groups, embodies the Italian client’s Old World notions of customer service, and showcases an innovative, easily reconfigurable custom merchandise display system.

In Johnson Chou’s design concept, the space is a pristine container enclosing four discrete, stainless steel-clad forms with shapes derived from their function. The forms are deployed to generate a sense of tension and enhance the sense of movement throughout the store.

At the entrance, a stainless steel-clad “tube” with a lowered ceiling defines the cash area. Aligned as if extruded from the storefront glazing, the tube initiates an intimately scaled introduction, its depth generating a proscenium effect that focuses and frames the view of the boutique from the street.

A walnut-veneer display wall along the length of the store divides it into unequal halves, the larger for casual wear and the narrower for exclusive labels. Storage racks above the fixturing system are sufficiently commodious that the owner was able to accommodate a downsized storage room, freeing up more floor space for retailing.

By confining merchandise display to this interior partition, the walls were able to remain clean and unadorned. Such a move carries luxury cachet in retailing, where revenue-generating clutter tends to prevail. A rectangular vessel perpendicular to the display wall at the far end of the store contains the fitting rooms and lounge. Chromogenic glass along the fitting rooms is clear when the doors are open and opaque when they are closed. In its opaque mode, the glass doubles as a screen for projecting still images or videos.

Daoust: Nicely done.
Banse: I like the linear quality.
Drobot: I don’t like the blue and orange at the back.
Niven: But it’s those conflicting colours at the back that draw you in. Schleeh: What strikes me is the quality of the detailing.
Bullock: I love that glass surround floating above the metal shirt display cabinets.
Robbie: This is a clever use of a narrow shopping space.