Client: 10 Corso Como
Group: Group 5
Themes: water which echoes the Navigli of Milan, reflections seems magic, suspended atmosphere, furniture which seems solid, instead is an inflatable membrane, profiles which resemble “modanature”, modularity, transparencies, mystery.
- Architecture for Fashion 2022
In 2022, YACademy launched the 3rd edition of the Architecture for Fashion course with the partnership of the prestigious Milanese Concept Store “10 Corso Como”.
The laboratory of the course, tutored by Giuseppe Zampieri, Founder and Managing Director of David Chipperfield Architects Milan, focused on the design of a pop-up store in the very special setting of 10 Corso Como.
- A Pop-Up for 10 Corso Como
Founded in 1991 in Milan, 10 Corso Como is recognized as the first concept store, promoting a close link between fashion and design. The store features a curated mix of creative mediums in a succession of spaces: a cafe, a fashion and design store, a garden, a restaurant, three mini-suites, a gallery of photography, a bookshop and a terrace. With a strong visual identity, created by the artist Kris Ruhs in the 90’s, 10 Corso Como is an urban jungle, a magical, vibrant space in the heart of Milan. For the workshop, YACademy’s young designers were asked to develop a Pop-Up store able to reinterpret the core values and the visual identity of the store.
- The project: “Ripples”
“Ripples” was a project developed by YACademy students Anna Rudenko, Ening Liu, Joyce Li, Raitis Rauza, and Jerry Zhang who interpreted the identity of 10 Corso Como both as a place of magic and a piece of history of the city of Milan, its fashion and retail culture. In particular, the designers focused on re-proposing the complex spatial experience of the store, its values, and visual identity in the design of the Pop-Up store.
In their Pop-Up proposal, a variety of elements collaborate in creating a rarefied, suspended game of reflections, transparencies, and illusions that refers constantly to the theme of water, of the ripples, which not only represent a perturbation of the stasis of into a dynamic change but also perpetuates through time, recalling both the dynamism of 10 Corso Como and of the city of Milan with its worldwide famous Navigli.
Inside the store, the three main elements are:
- 1. ceiling and its lighting system which through its wavy and corrugated shape creates an infinite play of light effects that create a feeling of being in a magical and underwater world;
- 2. vertical partition walls which continue the vibrant effect of the ceiling by filtering and blurring the light coming in from the surroundings in illusory reflections;
- 3. furniture perpetuates the illusion by providing lightweight and modular elements that appear to be solid because of their hard surfaces, while their structure is an inflatable membrane, which makes them easy to deploy, move, and assemble in more complex elements, both for inside and outside settings.
In conclusion, a simple and effective layout, with implied layers of complexity in combining all these elements into a coherent yet elegant design.
