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Freitag is a brand selling colorful messenger bags and accessories made from recycled truck tarpaulins and used car seat belts. This interior and exterior design project is Kyoto‘s store, the fourth of the brand in Japan. The 97 m2 of the store, on a street near Nishiki market, displays 1,100 one-of-a-kind items.
Originally the ground floor of two buildings, with different structures, were combined into a single retail space. The existing spandrel wall and shutter were removed, so that the glass facade opens fully toward the storefront and enhances the connection between the street and inside. The store reveals the bare structure of each adjacent reinforced-concrete and steel skeleton with the remaining concrete columns and steel columns standing closely in the center. The island fixtures such as a large workbench type with rubber top, and V100, Freitag‘s original system define a clean space constructed with rough concrete columns and beams. The pendant light delivers enough even light which is diffused by reflectors to the top of the island fixtures, where items can be examined thoroughly. Some functions such as a stockroom and a POS counter are located in the steel structure section with a semi-outdoor workspace. The first DIY workstation in Japan installed in the workspace provides opportunities to make original items. The system fixture fixed on the stockroom wall covered with the wood wool cement board enables multiple patterns of visual display for the items. The full-sized truck running on a highway, drawn on the wall facing the parking lot, symbolizes the store image as an industrial distribution center in Zurich, Freitag’s base. Through interpreting the conflict between two different structures to the distinct advantages of the existing building, we aimed to create the space representing Freitag‘s creativity. FREITAG KYOTO
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