Submitted by WA Contents
Indian jewellery boutique by MuseLAB features terracotta-doused interiors creating a sinuous island
India Architecture News - May 07, 2024 - 11:53 1241 views
Amorphous-shaped counters, bowl-shaped terracotta-covered display volumes, and carved-out undulating walls transform the interiors of a new jewellery boutique into an exciting atmosphere.
The boutique, named Fortune Farm Store, is a 93-square-metre store located in Ahmedabad’s high street in India.
Designed by Indian studio MuseLAB, the project aims to challenge traditional retail store typologies with its rich and immersive experience in boutique interiors.
The interior space is shaped within a cuboidal, jewel box-like volume. While the interior transforms into a terracotta-covered terrain, its undulating walls transform into an island, with the display counter in the middle of the island transforming into a mystical blooming moonscape.
"While ideating for this lineage jeweller’s enterprise, we decided to do away with design dictums that have long reigned this typology," said MuseLAB.
"The traditional ‘across-the-counter’ (read: stark and transactional) modus operandi was turned on its head, and how! The result: a store that concocts a sensory, riveting, and curiosity-fuelled journey."
"Commanding the layout’s nucleus, the ‘discovery island’ is a melange of many creative epiphanies," the studio explained.
Thanks to its sinuous form, customers crowd the perimeter of this island and are guided by a deliberate trajectory, pausing, talking and examining its periphery. The architects describe this experience as "enjoying an exquisite grazing table."
"On the menu is a sentient, lunar landscape, majestic in its topography of gritty craters and an army of ring bearers conceptualised by Artist Shailesh Rajput’s collaborative," added the studio.
"These mystical ring bearers dwell within glass cloches, analogous to biodomes — a world within a world, in absolute equilibrium yet meshed seamlessly with the larger, selenic landscape," it added.
The office adds a bespoke pendant light above the island, creating a visual yin-yang effect with the mirror image of the old shape.
"Gauzy, stretched fabric and spotlights sensuously illuminate the adornments below, held delicately in the embrace of the legion of ring bearers," the studio explained.
"Amoebic mirrors line the blueprint along one edge, reflecting fragmented vignettes of the discovery island and are perfect for gazing into while adorning jewellery."
The architects combine rusty terracotta and moody charcoal to present a "shining star". According to the office, it produces a theatrical narrative scenario that celebrates this duality: "delicate and brilliant diamonds finding a home within the fiery Martian milieu."
The team added that "The two worlds couldn’t be further apart, yet in the same breath, any closer."
Floor plan
Plan for material selection
Section
Axonometric drawing
Inspiration board
Inspiration board
Inspiration board
Inspiration board
Project facts
Project Name: Fortune Farm Store
Design Firm: MuseLAB
Location: Ahmedabad, India
Area: 93m2
Completion: October 2023
Principal Designers: Jasem Pirani, Huzefa Rangwala
Team: Fahim Khambati, Trupti Desai
Collaborations: Shailesh Rajput Design Studio, Flos India
All images © Ishita Sitwala.
All drawings © MuseLAB.
> via MuseLAB