With the opening of the new SHOEBALOO flagship store on June 1st 2006 Rotterdam has a new shop with international allure. A shop with the largest collection of exclusive shoes, bags and accessories in the Netherlands. Now where in the Netherlands is such a large choice of designer footwear for men, women and children in just in one shop. You can find in the shop articles by designers Miu Miu, Gucci, Fendi, Dolce & Cabbana, Stella McCartney, Desare Paciotii, Chloe, Dior, Prada, Roberto Botticelli and many more.
Meyer en Van Schooten Architecten has already made a design in 2003 for a SHOEBALOO shop. This futuristic shoe shop in the P.C. Hooftstraat in Amsterdam got a lot of national and international attention and was praised. After this success SHOEBALOO asked again Meyer to design a new shop concept for a new store in Rotterdam. This new shoe shop is the new flagship store of SHOEBALOO and is a large shop in which two former shops are combined. Earlier SHOEBALOO had two shops in the area, one for men and one for women and children.
The store, established in the former Lumier cinema, is a super glossy world of color and reflection. It is designed as a separate world, one where you have to step into to find out what is inside. The shop window gives some hints already. The glass has a light green foil of which holes are cut out. Just behind these peepholes at the inside of the shop there are white leather coffers. In each coffer stands one shoe as a jewel, shining in their one spotlight, tempting the customers. Through these coffers you can get a first glimpse of the interior.
Coming through the door the surprise is big. A dark, large open space, the shop is nearly 4 times the size of the shop in the P.C.Hooftstraat in Amsterdam, folds as a glossy interior before the eye. Mirrors and a mirroring stretch ceiling make that the spatiality becomes more intense. The quality shoes, bags and accessories were leading for the design. These items deserve a special surroundings, a special and attention they deserve. A place where al the attention is focused on the individual shoe. In the design you can find a organic basic shape. For elaboration of this basic shape in the total concept for the store: floor, ceiling, coffers, displays, lighting and furnish there was a intensive search for the right material and implementation techniques. Everything, from ceiling, to furnish, to floor, all parts of this shop is special designed and manufactured.
The layout of the shop is quite basic. Along the wall are the displays for shoes and bags and the middle of the shop you have a large open space. The floor space is empty, only the cash desk and some organic shaped sit and display elements are placed freely in this open space. The cash desk is furnished with black leather and the low sit and display elements are from white polyester and has silver leather seats. The sit elements have illumination under the plinth so it looks like the elements hover just above the floor.
The floor is a synthetic floor (self-leveling screed). The floor is dark gray in which the organic basic form is repeated as lighter gray, large pebbles. The floor got a mirroring top coating. The ceiling is also mirroring. It looks like it is painted in high gloss paint, but it is a black stretch ceiling. It is made of a plastic foil mounted on a profile and fitted by heat (with a kind of large blow-drier). This ceiling will slightly heave by the motion of people in the shore.
Along the black side walls the shoes and boots are displayed in white coffers. These coffers are vacuum formed plastic coffers in which, slightly set back, several shelf’s are made. So each coffer has several spaces to put boots and shoes in, boots in the back and shoes in the front. It looks like every coffer has an unique form, but the coffer wall is a smart play with the organic basic form. The flat rear panels of the coffers has a low relief of the basic form. The rear panels are translucent and let through the colored lighting which lies behind the coffer wall. The color of this lighting at the rear – RGB-led’s – changes constantly and is set the atmosphere for the store.
Inside the mirroring rear walls are closed glazed display cases. These showcases, in which the designer bags are shown, has also an illuminated, translucent plastic rear panel. Here it is bright light. The storage is just behind the back wall of the shop.
