Staggered signage hides the contents
of Amsterdam design shop by i29

The products on sale in this monochrome design shop by Dutch interiors studio i29 are concealed behind a fragmented sequence of signage panels that create an optical illusion (+ slideshow).

i29 created the Amsterdam shop, named Frame Store, for the retail arm of Dutch design publication Frame Magazine. The store sells a combination of art and design objects, magazines and clothing.

The local office wanted to offer “a three-dimensional experience of the magazine” for customers, so two tiers of white panels with black frames extend out from the walls of the simple white space.

From a spot on the shop floor, black markings on the white panels align to form the word “NEW.”

Shop merchandise is hidden on triangular shelving and clothing rails behind the black-framed panelling that increases and then decreases in size towards a shop counter at the back of the space.

“Looking from back to front, the shop offers a totally different experience,” said the designers, whose first collaboration with the magazine was a mirror-lined pop-up shop in an 18th century-building.

“The contrast of these two worlds within one shop surprises,” they said.

The designers play on the contrasts between black and white, flat and three-dimensional, square and triangular, and empty and full throughout the design of the space.

The black painted shelving is illuminated by a series of mismatched white pendant lights hung between each wooden board.

The white panels facing the front of the shop can be changed to display text and artwork relating to the current stock.

“The interior design is based on the changeability of such a diverse shop,” said the designers. “Flexibility and being able to change the store identity completely was our main focus.”

“Personalised presentations on particular themes can be exposed. The use of text and graphic art link back to the magazine’s origins,” they said.

Dutch conceptual artist Niek Pulles was invited to present a series of masks called Future Tribes for the shop’s opening. Close-up images of the unsettling masks are currently displayed on the upper panels to one side of the shop floor.

Photography is by Ewout Huibers.

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