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Spatial designer and artist Adi Goodrich has filled the Dreams lifestyle store in Los Angeles' Atwater Village with colourful surrealist details, including a lobster phone and a "glowing" blue rock.
Goodrich created the store together with her creative partner and Dreams' owner, Monica Navarro, with whom she'd previously worked on the Wine + Eggs grocery store in the same neighbourhood.
The Dreams interior was informed by daydreams and the surrealist aspect of dreams, with in-store accessories such as a lobster phone that nods to artist Salvador Dalí's 1938 artwork.
"The store was inspired by the spirit of the surrealists who embraced irrationality, adventure and dreaming," Goodrich told Dezeen.
"The owners wanted me to design a concept store around this theme," she added.
"I aimed to design a space that felt like a journey. Not one idea, but many. To do this, it also needed to feel calm and directed so colour was used to evoke various feelings as a visitor passes through the space."
Dreams will sell homeware and clothing by both local artists and bigger brands, and was divided into various departments such as home, apothecary, books, children, apparel, and accessories.
When entering the store, which measures just 12 by 72 feet (3.6 by 21 metres), visitors are welcomed by warm peach and terracotta colours that give way to calmer blues and greens at the back.
At its very end, a large Klein-blue 'rock' adds another dreamlike feel to the interior.
"I wanted the rock to be a literal grounding point of the store," Goodrich explained.
"The rock is the main subject in the composition and embraces the irrational juxtaposition that the surrealists embraced. Anything goes, and I wanted to add a strange sort of natural element to the store."
The rock was painted in Blue Screen paint, which is completely matte and normally used to set out key backgrounds when working with computer-generated imagery.
"With such a bright blue paint which does not reflect any light, it really commands your attention," Goodrich said. "The blue rock was custom carved from foam and hard-coated, it’s basically a zoo rock."
The store also features a ceiling decorated with hand-cut medium-density fibreboard (MDF) shapes that symbolise events in the owner's life, an archway clad in Japanese tiles and a plexiglass-ceiling covered in floating clouds.
"The ceiling in the back of the store is a custom sky print on plexiglass we created with a printer I’ve worked with in my career as a set designer for the past 10 years," Goodrich said. "It took many printer samples to get the right color, ink opacity and sheen."
The surrealist concept behind the interior also informed the shapes used on the custom-made furniture and lighting.
"I wanted a visitor to feel as if they were entering a shop that the surrealist artists would have not only created but visited," Goodrich explained.
"I had recently read about Henry Van der Velde's Havana Tobacco Company cigar shop which used curvilinear lines on ceilings, doorways and furniture inspired by cigar smoke," she added.
"I was inspired to create a similar shop in which every corner was intentionally designed around a dreamy surrealist feeling. I used repetition in the round forms on both the counter and the soffit above the counter to refer to designs that were popular in the era of surrealism."
Other notable store interiors in Los Angeles include the latest Apple Store, located in The Grove and designed by British studio Foster + Partners with indoor trees and a mirrored ceiling, and British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye's pink concrete design for fashion retailer The Webster.
The photography is by Ye Rin Mok unless stated otherwise.
The futuristic exterior of the much-anticipated Taipei Performing Arts Center, designed by OMA, has been photographed in Taiwan ahead of its official opening in 2022.
The photographs revealed by OMA show the 59,000-square-metre cultural landmark, which is home to three protruding auditoriums, with its scaffolding removed.
Taipei Performing Arts Center was designed by OMA in collaboration with local architecture studio Kris Yao | Artech and engineering firm Arup on a site adjacent to Shilin Night Market – one of Taipei's most popular night markets.
It is slated to open to the public in the summer of 2022.
The complex is composed of three auditoriums that protrude from a glass cube, which is elevated above the ground to form a public plaza.
It was commissioned by the Taipei City Government to support performing arts groups in the country.
One of the centre's focal points is the Globe Playhouse, a spherical 800-seat theatre that is intended to resemble a planet.
Its other auditoriums are the Grand Theater, a 1500-seat venue, and the Blue Box, an 800-seat multiform theatre for experimental performances.
The Grand Theater and Blue Box can also be merged to form a giant 2,300-seat venue, which is named the Super Theater.
All of Taipei Performing Arts Center's backstage areas are housed within the central cube, which OMA has surrounded with a circulatory space named the public loop.
The public loop is an access route for both the general public and ticket holders that offers views of the theatre's infrastructure and production spaces, which are usually hidden to visitors.
"With three theaters plugged into a central cube and a public loop, Taipei Performing Arts Center creates new internal workings of performing spaces, inspiring unimagined theatrical possibilities," said OMA's managing partner David Gianotten.
"This is a new kind of theater for artists, audiences, and the public to explore the creative life in novel ways," Gianotten continued.
"Taipei Performing Arts Center, formed with a strong technical core and the more emotional theaters docked against it in mutual dependency, at once embodies new organization for theater, and works as a fresh, intelligent icon that encapsulates the city's creativity," added the studio's founding partner Rem Koolhaas.
OMA won a competition to design Taipei Performing Arts Center in February 2009. Construction began in 2012 and the building topped out in August 2014. The opening in 2022 will be nine years later than planned.
Dezeen Showroom:Italian floor and wall tile brand Ceramiche Keope has designed a porcelain tile collection made from onyx.
Called Onice, the light-reflecting onyx tiles are available in four different sizes and three unique colour options that weave delicate shades of polished marble together.
Pearl offers a cool shade of delicate grey, while Honey incorporates light-coloured warm tones into a stone designed to be reminiscent of sunlight.
Onice's Multicolour option is an unusual blend of sea-like greens and yellows, offset with subtle patches that give the appearance of shadows.
Onice tiles are made from onyx, a semi-precious material that is a type of marble, and are suitable for both walls and floors indoors, with the largest slab size being especially suitable for bathroom surfaces.
"Precious, resistant and bright, this marble stone is the result of technological innovation applied to interior design and gives depth to settings thanks to the games of light on reflective surfaces," said Ceramiche Keope.
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Dezeen promotion: architects can now create visualisations of their projects directly in CAD, using Enscape's real-time rendering plug-in.
Rendering plug-in Enscape offers a range of tools for turning digital models into photorealistic images and animations, and can also produce 3D walkthroughs that users can explore on screen or in virtual reality.
But unlike other visualisation software packages, it works directly through the user's modelling programme, so they don't have to keep exporting data.
It is available as a plug-in for five of the most widely used CAD (computer-aided design) packages including Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Vectorworks and Archicad.
"This means that you can design and instantly see your rendered project appear within your modelling tool," explained Enscape.
The programme offers real-time visualisation, which means that it processes changes to the design model as they happen.
This makes it easier for architects and designers to try out different ideas and design iterations within the 3D-rendered environment, and quickly see their impact.
It's also simple to export rendered images, panorama galleries, or virtual reality experiences to share with clients or collaborators, even if they don't have access to the software.
"Real time, easy-to-use, and quality of output are the key features of Enscape's real-time visualisation tool," said the brand.
"And unlike other visualisation tools – no exporting or importing is required, helping users avoid disconnected workflows and design far more intuitively."
Enscape's current user base includes London- and Singapore-based Viewport Studio, which used the plug-in to design the interior of the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport, Spaceport America.
French studio KeurK also uses Enscape, which found the software essential to completing work on Biotope – a new headquarters for the municipality of Lille, France – in 18 months.
"Because of the schedule we had, we had to consistently show our clients good content," said KeurK founder Olivier Riauté. "Enscape really helped to make this possible."
A new version of Enscape has just been released, featuring a range of new and updated features.
To find out more or to sign up for a free 14-day trial, visit Enscape's website.
Partnership content
This article was written by Dezeen for Enscape as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.