VICUTU Flagship Beijing by AntiStatics Architecture
The Flagship Store for the Vicutu Fashion Brand, architecturalizes and spatializes the core elements of the brand through the exploration, manipulation, and reinvention. The clothing attributes of the fashion industry are reinterpreted through futuristic vision and exquisite architectural language, providing customers with a unique experience while remaining true to the expression of the fabric, tailoring and quality of the fashion.
Within three years of design and construction, the brand new VICUTU Flagship store is appeared at the promenade street front of Shangde Center in Daxing District, Beijing. It is divided into upper and lower floors, with a total building area of 1680 square meters, including three brands Gornia, Vicutu Blue Label and Vicutu Red Label. The design concept is extracted from the "V" shape of the VICUTU brand and integrated into the flexible weaving to form an ecological weaving system from the weaving natural of the fashion fabric. The continuous language exhibits throughout the architectural facade to the interior special language and details.
The fabric develops from a weave, the intertwining of threads into a larger garment, within the façade this language is carried out at a massive architectural scale, presenting visitors with a novel added skin to the building. Similar to the nature of tailoring flat fabrics into three dimensional garments, the construction of the façade comes from an innovative fabrication process of bending and flexing aluminum sheets into doubly curved geometries. For the first time in the architectural industry, a large-scale three-dimensional metal weaving system is adopted, which reflects the production process and fabric properties of men's clothing on the facade. The endless flexible weaving becomes the core IP and visual symbol of the project. The weaving system "grows" from the bottom of the building to the top and integrates with the metal louver of the building's glass curtain wall, which symbolizes that the brand absorbs nutrition and wisdom from the earth, and is continuously transported to the top, in a life circle.
Within the interior of the Flagship store, the whole space language simulates the mountains, waterfalls, deserts, and celestial phenomena in the nature, creating an immersive place of endless rebirth and nirvana, reflecting the perseverance of mankind. Textured artistic cement wall reflects a classic, low-key, and sculptural environment. All walls and display counters "grow" from the ground and the ceiling, at the meantime the effect of continuity and growth is enhanced through hidden light sources. The Continuous curvilinear space is created through a geometric language distilled from flowing and draping fabrics. The columns and beams woven throughout the space, flow into one another creating continuity between moments while simultaneously acting as partitions within the larger space. Through the perception of fabrics and their translation into an architectural language, via distillation of fluidity into regulated form, new experiential qualities of space emerge presenting the visitors with spaces that encourage intimate examination while curved "growth" walls and dynamic skylight guide customers into different display areas.
Throughout the store, the woven diagrid language creates a unity through its varied expression and implementation as detail. Embedded as relief within pedestals, as graphic within floor patterns and as a three-dimensional lattice in the interior façade, this geometry adds an additional layer of reference to the woven nature of fashion, both literally as a means of producing fabric, but additionally as an expression of the client, as a leader in the industry, who has become interwoven position within the artistic development of Chinese fashion.
The project serves as a deep and multifaceted showpiece for the client to exhibit not only the latest designs of the brand, but also as a means of illustrating the potentials for innovation within unique collaborations with other industries like architecture. The space creates deeply experiential engagement with the visitor through the fine attention to detail across the scale of the project. Promoting the physical experience of space and fashion, the space offers a retreat from the digital world.
Team:
Client: VICUTU (Beijing Gelei Fashion Technology Co., Ltd)
Architects: AntiStatics Architecture
Lead Architects: Mo Zheng, Martin Miller
Project Architect: Christopher Beckett
Team: Yasser Hafizs, Luke Theodorius E.D.Santoso, Frank Feng, Annie Liu, Dhaga Aman, Wenlin Bai, Yue Xi, Boyan Zhang, Arthur Yang, Yong Li, Weidong Zhang, Zhiming Wu, Changyong Guo, Jingwei Zhang
Main Contractor: Beijing Chenfeng Polang Architectural Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd.
GRG Fabricator: E-grow Shanghai
Photo Credits: UK Studio, AntiStatics, Arthur Yang
Materials Used:
Wall art cement paint: TOP PROJECT
Lighting Supplier: CDN
Double curved aluminum plate curtain wall on the exterior façade: Lida Decoration Group Co., Ltd
Terrazzo: Sterrazzo
Intelligent lighting control system: HDL
