AIM Architecture adds slide-like staircase to Shanghai store In the Park

Shanghai studio AIM Architecture has inserted a red staircase that resembles a children's slide in the middle of this clothing store to create a playful interior.

Named In the Park, the Shanghai store was designed to reflect the playfulness of the clothing brand while drawing on the layout of traditional Chinese parks.

AIM Architecture wanted to create a playful interior for the fashion brand

AIM Architecture wanted to transform what was once an inaccessible three-storey space in the middle of a busy shopping mall into something that felt interconnected and coherent.

The most prominent feature is a striking 4.2-metre-tall staircase made from fibreglass and rubber that resembles a children's playground slide or a skating bowl.

A striking fibreglass staircase forms the centre piece of the store

"The staircase is as inspired by a suburban skate bowl as much as it is an austere garden," Wendy Saunders, AIM's founder and principal architect, told Dezeen.

"We wanted to make the stairs more than just a way up but an experience in itself and at the same time breaking the high climb for the customers by adding an extra floor."

Clothes, magazines and homeware items are displayed around columns

Red steps snake from the mezzanine to a halfway platform and continue on to the ground floor, connecting all levels inside the store.

"Making a connection between all the floors is an important part of the spatial identity," said Saunders. "The original site was three storeys high with no connection and a forest of columns, making parts of the space unreachable."

Steel shelving units contrast the bold staircase

While shoppers entering In the Park are immediately confronted by the staircase, the brand's clothes, shoes and other homeware items are spread out sporadically around the space.

On the first floor, a record store has been tucked around a corner out of sight.

Customers are taken on a winding journey to discover items

According to the designers, this echoes the arrangement of landscaping in China's parks and gardens.

"We were strongly inspired by traditional Chinese parks, where winding paths lead the visitor to secluded areas," said Saunders.

Several other decorative elements alongside the main staircase were used to contribute to the playful look.

Aluminium shelves informed by park benches wrap around "tree like" columns throughout the store. Outside, bamboo chairs and a large oval seat surround a bed of plants.

Red rubber furnishings create a sense of cohesion throughout

Playful hues and shapes in the store are set against minimal furnishings such as the steel shelving units and the muted grey colour palette.

Industrial, untouched pillars around the store also contrast the cheerful centre piece, giving the interior a more balanced feel.

A minimalist record shop is hidden around a corner

This isn't the first time AIM has revamped part of a retail mall, having previously studio designed a lobby and a shopping centre inside Fuxing Plaza in Shanghai.

AIM also transformed an atrium in the Xintiandi mall in Shanghai by adding a number of natural materials and plants.

Photography is by Wen Studio.

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Watch Atelier Bow-Wow's 2021 Royal Academy annual architecture lecture

Dezeen has teamed up with London's Royal Academy of Arts to broadcast this year's annual architecture lecture by Atelier Bow-Wow founders Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima.

In the lecture, which is titled Architectural Behaviorology, the Japanese architects discussed the architectural impact of the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 and 2021 and how it has affected their own practice.

Atelier Bow-Wow worked with local people to help rebuild Momonoura village after it was devastated by the 2011 tsunami

The duo also explained their approach to architecture – how they try to create a continuous loop between research, teaching and their own design work – before discussing how they have increasingly shifted their attention to rural areas of Japan.

Projects featured in the talk include Atelier Bow-Wow's work over a number of years in Momonoura, a small fishing village that was devastated by the Tsunami in 2011.

Kaijima explained how they worked with the villagers to create new accommodation made from local materials to attract new residents and visitors to the area.

Atelier Bow-Wow's Tanada Terrace Office is a concept for a rural office

Tsukamoto presented projects including the studio's Tanada Terrace Office pavilion, a concept for a rural office that Atelier Bow-Wow built with Muji in an area of Japanese farmland dominated by terraced rice fields.

The concept intended to suggest a new typology of building that could provide a space for city workers to visit the countryside in order to encourage better integration and interaction between urban and rural communities.

Tsukamoto and Kaijima founded Atelier Bow-Wow in 1992 and have devoted their practice to investigating the material, social and economic conditions of architecture.

In 2019, the duo told Dezeen how the Tokyo 2020 Olympics had reduced the opportunities for smaller practices in the city.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima gave the 30th annual architecture lecture remotely

Tsukamoto and Kaijima's lecture, which they gave in July remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic, is the 30th annual architecture lecture organised by the Royal Academy of Arts. Dezeen has collaborated with the RA to make the talk available for people to watch for free for the first time.

Previous annual architecture lectures have been given by architects including Jean-Philippe Vassal, Grafton Architects, Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi and Amateur Architecture Studio. The five most recent talks are available to watch on Dezeen here.

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The renovation of Eileen Gray's E-1027 house features in today's Dezeen Weekly newsletter

The latest edition of our Dezeen Weekly newsletter features a renovation of Eileen Gray's E-1027 modernist house in southern France.

The seminal modern home recently reopened following a five-year renovation by The Association Cap Moderne, which returned it to the state it was in when it was completed in 1929 by Gray.

Readers are excited to take a closer look, with one commenting: "Would love to see it in this restored state".

Our home libraries lookbook includes a barn conversion by Tonkin Liu

Other stories in this week's newsletter include a round-up of home libraries, a floating offshore wind power generator and details of our Redesign the World competition, which closes in just two weeks.

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AndrénFogelström installs sculptural spheres in Stockholm park

Children can play, hide and climb inside a series of sculptural spheres in a playground in Vårbergstoppen, Stockholm designed by Swedish architecture studio AndrénFogelström.

AndrénFogelström has decorated Vårbergstoppen, a park on a hill on the outskirts of Stockholm, with several colourful spheres.

The architects installed a giant orange sphere at the top of Vårbergstoppen park. Photo is by Brendan Austin

The studio worked with landscape architecture practice Land Arkitektur to update the park, in a bid to counteract some of the urbanisation occurring in the park's suburban location.

"We wanted to make something exciting and unusual to inspire kids as well as adults to explore," studio founders Moa Andrén and Tove Fogelström told Dezeen.

"The idea came from a client who was inspired by the steep hill and the thought was that great balls would roll down the slope, almost as if a giant was throwing them," they continued.

Perforated metal allows daylight to filter through the orb

A large orange sphere constructed out of perforated metal sheets sits at the top of the hill.

AndrénFogelström cut the metal into individual hexagons, before welding them together into the spherical structure.

It is meant to look as if it is about to roll down the hill

The architects spent a long time working out how to make the structure look as though it were about to roll down the hill.

"It was an immense task during construction to make them fit together, and the structural engineer had a great deal of work just managing how to mark the pieces during the construction," AndrénFogelström said.

"It is a self-bearing construction where the parts support each other in the spheric form. It appears to be rolling down but is safely anchored to the ground," the architects explained.

Adults and children can sit inside the hollow sphere

Children and adults can enter the sphere through a circular opening to rest on its stepped wooden benches. At night, the sphere is lit by several small floor lights. Cables to the lights are threaded through the legs.

In the winter, the architects imagine that people will use the sphere as a starting point for sledging down the hill.

Three smaller spheres, which are positioned inside the playground at the foot of the hill, were made for younger children to play on and climb.

One sphere has a slide, another one has a little bench. All have small holes for peeking out of while playing.

Three smaller spheres are set inside the children's playground

Each of the spheres, which the studio thinks of as "little worlds," is made from wood which has been treated with linseed oil to increase its durability.

The frames, which stand on a block of concrete underneath the ground, are all made of steel.

Each hollow sphere has little circles through which children can peep while at play

Vårbergstoppen's unique geographical history also informed the architect's design choices. Swedish city landscape architect Holger Blom created Vårbergstoppen as an artificial hill in the 1960s.

The architects drew on the circular shapes Blom used, in an effort to honour his creation.

"The landscape was clearly designed, as the landscape architect who made the park in the 60s worked with forming the masses in geometric forms; the most significant one is a circular crater with a diameter of 100 meters," the studio said.

The structures are part of a wider redevelopment of the park

Other playgrounds that make use of playful, sculptural structures include The Folds by Atelier Scale in China which encourages children to explore in a more tactile way than usual.

Architecture office Studio Dlux created a multicoloured playground for children at a school in Curitiba that features curved mounds with tunnels for schoolchildren to climb through.

Photography is by Clément Morin unless stated otherwise.

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Palisociety and North 45 Projects return grand Portland hotel to its original use

Palisociety and North 45 Projects have preserved original details at this early 20th-century hotel in Portland, Oregon, which reopened this year as the Hotel Grand Stark.

Originally built in 1908, the building sits across the Willamette River from the city's Downtown area and was formerly known as the Chamberlain Hotel.

Hotel Grand Stark occupies a 1908 building that was originally a hotel, but used until recently as a furniture workshop

Hotel Grand Stark takes its name from the intersection of SE Grand Avenue and SE Stark Street, where an ornate sign advertised the furniture workshop that had occupied the building for the past several decades.

Los Angeles-based hospitality group Palisociety recently took over the property, converting it back to its original use as a 57-room hotel. The guest bedrooms occupy the top three storeys, while the ground floor contains the hotel's public amenities, designed in partnership with local studio North 45 Projects.

Marble and green accents are combined in the lobby

A new sign marks the entrance to the hotel, leading guests and local residents to the lobby-cum-art gallery that occupies part of the ground level.

"Hotel Grand Stark is envisioned as a communal, inclusive public space featuring a gallery-inspired central lobby that connects the public spaces upon entry with a neutral backdrop punctuated by a carefully collected art installation featuring local artists and makers, custom furnishings and vintage pieces," said Palisociety.

A dark green staircase continues this colour theme

The hotel's dark green reception desk is set against a wall of orange Breccia Pernice marble. These elements and the lobby's contemporary furniture selections contrast and complement the building's original features, such as wood floors that were preserved throughout.

Off to one side of the lobby is a deli-style eatery with casual seating, while a bar at the back of the space is described as a "re-envisioning of the classic hotel watering hole".

Another communal area allows patrons to host private gatherings or work remotely, using long tables provided for collaboration or focused work.

"Behind the front desk, guests will find the Study Hall, a bright, separate space designed to be a community work and meeting space that can also be used as a private dining room for intimate special events," Palisociety explained.

The Study Hall has long tables for communal working

Upstairs, the rooms were designed to with homey finishes that are meant to remind guests of a residential setting.

"A playful mix of millwork, textiles and patterns are layered throughout, combining florals, tartans and wovens to create dimension and personality in the space," said Palisociety. "Vintage rugs and custom lighting add a residential-inspired element of comfort and style."

More green accents and wooden furniture decorate the cosy guest rooms

The green of the reception desk also appears on custom millwork found in the guest bedrooms, as well as the staircase, deli, and tiles found in the study lounge.

Palisociety was founded by Avi Brosh in 1998 and focuses on a "locally inspired and neighborhood-centric approach to independent hospitality".

Among Portland's other accommodation options are a branch of The Hoxton hotel chain, the Woodlark Hotel occupying two landmarked buildings, and The Society Hotel in a former sailors' lodge.

The photography is courtesy of Palisociety.

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