Diorama Verbier
The pop-up store transforms a typical retail space into gallery-like space. As a self-portrait of Verbier, the mountain silhouette is translated and engraved into the stainless steel surfaces and reproduced once again as an AI image on the central wall. Branded clothing becomes part of the exhibition. What takes center stage? Image? Goods? Visitor?
The Verbier pop-up store was a design task to create an interior for a high-end fashion brand. The time pressure was a real challenge: the store was expected to open in just 10 weeks when we first met the client. Making it happen required a swift and intense process, including a dialogue-driven design phase, contracting production, supervising transport, as well as assisting the contractors on site.
Another challenge was to find the right balance between client’s demand for high-quality finishes matching the high-priced apparel on one hand, and the limited budget typically available for seasonal pop-ups on the other. Our stance as architects is fundamentally against a disposable “just-throw-away” approach. Furthermore, in the tight timeline, prefabrication was inevitable.
From our proposed solutions, the client opted for the one that required a radical closure of all store windows, which normally provided a view towards the mountains. The storefront windows were transformed to fully display the brand and its collection, while the interior shifted towards a mirror maze of polished stainless-steel walls with engraved mountain contours and niches carrying the apparel. A concrete wall at the centre of the store was covered with a large-scale, AI generated banner – a diorama of Verbier’s stunning mountain range, reflecting itself in the surrounding stainless-steel surfaces.
A visitor is confronted with a closed gallery-like space, portraying clothes nested in a shining maze with a mountain range leitmotif. The construction itself was completely prefabricated: 23 structural welded steel racks with 34 engraved steel sheets were assembled on site within 2 days and completed with the mountain panorama image.
