Dutch interior and design studio i29 has conceived a Pop-up shop for the design magazine Frame inside the historic Felix Meritis, an 18th-century building in Amsterdam. Realized in collaboration with the local Foam Photography Museum, the project has turned the building into a creative center that is set to host numerous events and exhibitions.
The Frame Store offers a three-dimensional experience of the magazine – a creative and innovative universe that surprises and inspires. The world of Frame shows what good design can do, and is a celebration of beauty, functionality and accessibility through timeless products. The Frame Store will stage new talents, new products and new brands from various genres. Fashion, art and design sit alongside media, beauty and food.
The interior of the canal-side store is just as inspiring as its innovative products. The monumentality of Zuilenzaal – an attraction in itself – has been heightened through an intervention by i29. Transforming the space into a mirrored universe, the award-winning designers elevate and reflect its grandeur.
To i29, the multiple use of mirrors throughout the monumental space stands for reflection of time and history; the old and the new. But also represents Frame’s role reflecting on architecture, interiors and products as shown in it’s magazine. Products are presented on series of single platforms with mirrored sides and black top surfaces with integrated black frames.
The surfaces and products seam to float through space. “Our goal was to create a surreal world of reflecting elements presenting the products without interfering with the quality of the monumental environment” said the architects.
Two larger mirrored objects contain fitting rooms, a small art gallery and stairs that offer a different perspective for the visitors climbing them, and a surreal image for the other visitors in the shop looking only at the top half of these personages. The beautiful contradiction of this intervention is that it is very minimal and modest, the volumes are absorbed in the existing space. But at the same time they are adding extreme sharpness and in that way intensifying the existing space.
