A travertine ramp sorts the centrepiece of the Vans West End retailer in London, which was remodelled by architect Andrea Caputo to rejoice skateboarding, music and art work.
American apparel and tools mannequin Vans regarded to its skateboarding heritage when creating the concept for its retailer on London’s Oxford Highway, which it has occupied since 2019.
Caputo’s Milan-based studio oversaw the transformation of the store, which celebrates skateboarding custom by way of its daring design and direct references to the sport.
The first attribute that runs the scale of the store is a 200-square-metre skate ramp produced from travertine stone that was developed with enter from Vans’ crew of skateboarding ambassadors.
“Designed as a single huge block of stone, completely laid and polished on-site, the ramp can be the beating coronary coronary heart of the store,” said Vans, “used for regular skate courses, demos and events by the Vans skate crew and native skate faculties.”
The ramp is cut up alongside its dimension into completely totally different sections that sort obstacles for performing suggestions. This “multi-transition” configuration resembles an extended half pipe with a dramatic vertical wall at one end.
When not in use for skating, the ramp’s modules might be reconfigured to produce seating or merchandising stands.
A sequence of perforated glass panels that function like peg boards can also be added to spice up the retail reveals.
The modular set-up permits the within to be merely reconfigured so it might effectively perform its regularly place as a retail space, along with web internet hosting actions and events equal to reside music displays or art work exhibitions.
Totally different references to skateboarding featured all by means of the store embrace the plywood used for wall panelling and product reveals, which recollects the materiality of ordinary skate ramps.
The plywood was carved to create an irregular three-dimensional ground imagined to evoke the way in which during which skate boarders “grind” the metallic parts of their boards alongside ramps, rails and copings.
The rest of the within has a stripped once more, industrial aesthetic, with a concrete flooring and uncovered ducting contributing to a approach of metropolis authenticity.
Vans West End will present quite a lot of Vans merchandise alongside curated partnerships with producers equal to jewellers The Good Frog and creative studio Gomi, which produced a set of checkered audio system and powerbanks solely for the store.
Caputo beforehand designed a retailer for Vans in Seoul, South Korea, that features plywood present modules educated by the work of American artists Carl Andre and Donald Judd. Ultimate 12 months, Vans unveiled a brief lived skate bowl in entrance of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris.
The images is by Tom D Morgan till in every other case acknowledged.