Project Information
Name：Ark 2022, the Double Boo Concept Store in Beijing’s Cidi Memo iTown
Designer：AtelierTree
Leader：Casen Chiong
Team：Huang Xiaokun, Shi Shang
Client：Beijing Mingdai Trading Co., Ltd.
Constructor：Xiong Tengfei Team
Stainless steel：Beijing Shengxinda Construction Engineering Co., Ltd.
Site：D2-101, Cidi Memo Creative Park, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Area：350 sqm
Materials：Jotun Coating JOTUN (exterior wall), Jotun Coating JOTUN (interior wall), PU stone veneer, metal veneer panels, sandblasted stainless steel panel, stretch ceiling
Commission：September-November, 2021
Completion：March, 2022
Photography：Lv Bo
Video：AtelierTree
Translator：Chen Xiangying
The universe is in constant motion as far as its vastness allows.
Likewise, humanity is in constant creativity so long as their sensitivity touches clothes and accessories that cloth and connect them corporeally and perceptively.
Right in this sense, DOUBLE BOO beholds its new concept store to be opened in Beijing’s Cidi Memo iTown as an Ark for the New Age as contemporary creative apparel brands and products have been brought together there so comprehensively.
It is AtelierTree’s design strategy that associates the infinite charm of the universe with construction and expression to augment the values and energy spatially for the very brand store there, apart from satisfying its basic demands for efficiency and economy by establishing an overall super-clean consuming experience from functional layout, sales-line organization to three-dimensional imagery based on the site conditions.
While continuing its concept store’s spatial imprint in Sanlitun, here DOUBLE BOO has ∞, the infinity symbol, featured on its ceiling as well as the handles at the main entrance. In this way, the brand genes and the site conditions are hinged together, and an ontological form is conceived of the infinite depth and primary simplicity of the universe; namely, a contemporary place of retail experience that blends the black and the white, and mediates the void and the solid.
The store is situated on the ground floor among other core buildings of the Cidi Memo Creative Park, covering a square plan. Three out of all four sides face the passage and plaza immediately as a continuum of the public spaces. To the west, a monumental concrete elevated railway bridge stands as a modern relic, spanning all through the park in the north-south direction. The main passages and walkways of the park are arranged right under it along both sides, which, along with the core sports and leisure plaza to the north, engenders colorful activities and converges streams of people.
The interior is zoned into five sections: apparel display, accessory exhibition, bar, storage and office. The main display area adjoins the public passage and plaza, with its two entrances catering to the streams of walkers from the southwest corner and crowds from the plaza in the north. A rectangular-ambulatory plane not only improves the spatial utilization and maximizes the displayed goods, but also forms a double-ring-shaped endless circuit for the passengers; all along which the shopping experience versus displaying quantity is also well balanced as AtelierTree has effectively coordinated the solid-void interface between the circuit-walls and the display-shelves.
A positive gesture well-suited to the environment is also created through a strong void-solid contrast resulting from the closely interlocked exterior and interior. In the outer walls of the water-bar in the southwest corner as well as those of the northward-plaza-facing display section, large transparent panes of glass are adopted to open the interior outward, enhance communication with the street, and invigorate the magnetism of both spots to the streams of people outside. In the west, where the elevated railway bridge is mainly confronted, a wholly-closed enormous mass of geometry echoes the monumental sense of scale while reducing the building into a wildly robust monolith, the “carving out” the Ark and store.
All the external masses and most of the internal walls are fashioned in black. The walls are thickened for spatial separation, and then carved into niches for apparel display, with metallic sheets foiled inside, contrasting the outer vastness of paint and rock-grains in both sight and texture. Whiteness generates from the light continuously, then fades out upon the black solid, as if the transition of energy were caught by snapshots. Right in there, the human intervention by the body makes the black-white and void-solid tension perceptible, and the movement of energy is embodied as the journey of life.
In his “Tao Te Ching”, the philosopher Lao Tzu in the Chinese axial period asserted that “One (Tao) begets Two (yin and yang), Two begets Three (Heaven, Earth and Man), and Three begets all things. ” The very beginning and momentum of our universe and fellow-things are worth musing, as AtelierTree attempts here this time, by turning the numerous brands and products of apparel into an accommodating container. The rumination of the traditional philosophy of "Tao" leads to the abstraction of the endlessly creative complex forms into the simplicity of solid-void and black-white; with the assistance of the interactive relationships exploring in between space, time, and body, the upcoming new-age life will be approached and an imaginative journey into the universe will be embarked.
