Black Caviar - Palm Desert
Black Caviar - Palm Desert
CLIENT: Reajunir
LOCATION: Palm Desert, CA
SIZE: 2,000 SQ FT
OPENING: 2015
PROGRAM: Retail
CURVATURE AND TENSION: REINTERPRETING THE HUMAN SKIN
Reajunir Black Caviar is a young cosmetics start up featuring a line of high-end skin care products. The store at GalleriaI in Houston, Texas was the first out of more than 100 stores being planned for the next 10 years. The Palm Desert store was the second to open just a year later. The brief given by the client was clear: to develop a scheme that aesthetically would set apart the store’s appearance from its competitors. Our inspiration came from an attempt to translate the human skin into the smooth and curvilinear surfaces of the walls.
Ceiling and wall surfaces are in a continuous flow blurring the traditional notion of how vertical and horizontal surfaces interface in a conventional retail space. The walls have oval voids that work as product display zones, and as demo stations for customers.
Modern digital fabrication methods allowed two dimensional white and gold surface panels and their substructure to be prefabricated off site in a controlled environment, then shipped and installed on site. This provided for maximum control over the end product, making it more cost effective, faster to produce and construct, and also aesthetically refreshing.
our process
The same team working for the first prototype store in Houston, Texas worked again on the Palm Desert store. We worked closely with several experts throughout the design process, partnering with a design firm with extensive experience in parametric design development, which we needed in order to create the curvature of the interim skin. This relationship had to be symbiotic, pushing our team to remain flexible and responsive to the challenges of the design. We also looked for, and then found the ideal digital fabrication shop that could cut the CSC and routing of the detailed elements in the way the design called for.
At concept, we worked very closely not only with the client himself, but also with his marketing director and business development group to establish the criteria essential to the products' brand. This second store, followed the same language as the original Texas store, just adapting to the specific spacial requirements of the location.
In collaboration with OSA