DELVAUX LE 27 FLAGSHIP STORE
The place has been designed with an entirely new, custom-designed concept, deliberately original and decidedly unique. The main goal and the attitude of this project has been putting together an extremely contemporary design in a historical environment. Laid out on two floors, structurally, Le 27 has conserved the original typology of its handsome walls beneath four-metre high ceilings.
Everything is a contemporary interpretation and a celebration of the early period of the modern design that was so important in Belgian 20th century culture.
Wall displays are conceived as abstract paintings, and their design is a homage to the De Stijl / Mondrian pattern. Their rather classical, symmetrical installation is balanced by light-grey coloured vertical bands, a “wrong”, disrespectful interpretation of the classical attitude to colours of the baroque period, yet close to (again) the De Stijl period.
The wall panels combine with very pure, sleek cupboards and wall consoles, designed as a combination of asymmetrical, minimal forms, but enhanced by the use of precious materials more common in furniture design during the art-deco period, such as marble or polished nickel.
Both wall panels and cupboards feature extremely well-crafted details, a subliminal remainder not only to the tradition of the modern design masters but also to Delvaux’s unique savoir-faire and attention to details.
The combination of the apparently “poor” material and finishes of the Mondrian-esque wall displays, the rich, bourgeois finishes of the cupboards, and the out-centred coloured stripes, disrespectful of the classical spaces, is a balanced cohabitation between classic and modern, order and disorder, rule and exception.
The aim was also to reflect Delvaux nowadays’ attitude to design, where you have classic and rigorous forms, dialectically combined with extremely modern, chic, slightly playful insertions.
Photo credits: Santi Caleca
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