When it comes to multi-level boutiques, often each floor of a space can feel segregated from the other, acting as isolated spaces instead of parts of an organic retail whole. Not so for Axel Arigato’s latest Copenhagen flagship – and the brand’s latest 270 sq m store to date – which unites its two floors with a monumental raw concrete staircase, carved from jigsaw like asymmetric steps.
The space is another in Axel Arigato’s Europe-connecting retail puzzle. Just this year, the brand has opened spaces in Stockholm and Gothenberg. The label, which began as an online-only couture sneaker label, launching new styles weekly – opened its first bricks and mortar space in Central London’s bustling Soho in 2016.
‘#SilverDerriere’, by Kiri-una Brito Meumann, sits in Axel Arigato's Copenhagen store
On Pilestræde in Copenhagen – a street once associated with Denmark’s publishing industry – regular collaborator, architect Christian Halleröd and creative director Max Svärdh have conceived a monochromatic Brutalist space, the industrial grey shade that swathes its walls and ceiling offset with globule-like podiums. These sculptural fixtures are formed from jesmonite, before being dipped in high gloss cerulean and highlighter green lacquer. Their bulbous forms, alongside products which include trainers and t-shirts are reflected in immersive floor-to-ceiling mirrors and framed by a grid of rectangular LED panel lights, affixed to an exposed black ceiling.
Stripped back and sparse, Axel Arigato’s Copenhagen space resembles a sleek art gallery, a comparison only enhanced by its collaboration with Melbourne-based artist Kiri-una Brito Meumann, who counts A$AP Rocky as a fan. In the space – which carries men’s and women’s footwear, ready-to-wear and accessories, among books and objects – sits ‘#SilverDerriere’, a sculpture of life-size human buttocks, designed to foster human connection.
‘The store is created for the people in our community, rather than bringing sales. This is the future of retail,’ says co-founder and CEO Albin Johansson of the space, which will also play host to special projects and weekly events. Its future certainly looks bright; another space in Stockholm’s NK Luxury Department store in Stockholm, is on Axel Arigato's raw-concrete covered horizon.
INFORMATION
ADDRESS
Pilestræde 16
1112 Copenhagen
Denmark
-
The new Frederic Church Center at Olana complements its leafy Upstate New York siteTour the Frederic Church Center for Architecture and Landscape, now open at Olana, a historic site in Upstate New York, courtesy of architecture studio ARO
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper editors have been doing this weekA week of jetsetting has seen the editors in Tokyo, Milan, Vienna, Miami, New York and drinking Guinness with Jonathan Anderson in London
-
The Living Places experiment: how can architecture foster future wellbeing?Research initiative Living Places Copenhagen tests ideas around internal comfort and sustainable architecture standards to push the envelope on how contemporary homes and cities can be designed with wellness at their heart
