LOCATION: Ciudad Ribera – Rosario, Argentina
PROJECT
Agustina González Cid
Matías Imbern
TEAM
Federico Iocco [Project and Construction Manager]
Andrés Acosta
Sebastián Vizzo
PHOTOGRAPHS
Walter Gustavo Salcedo
YEAR 2013 - 2015
DESCRIPTION:
The project for a store of clothing and accessories for babies and children, is located on a pedestrian street on a new area of the city at the Paraná riverside, in an old dock that has been recycled for housing and stores on the ground. The presence of a number of concrete columns that support the load of the new upper floors, generates an initial field condition that determines the spatial configuration.
As a strategy, the columns are reinterpreted as a grid, longitudinally dividing the room in two areas: circulation and contact with the products. Transversely the project generates a large continuous space, ordered by the introduction of a system of 'folded ribbons' that divides the space into five areas: the entrance with the window, the three main sectors for exhibition and sale of products (accommodating items and clothing by age group, from babies to 6 year-old children), and the storage with an office space.
The ribbons are geometrically differentiated using a digital model that responds to two parameters: longitudinally, it gradually increases the height and ensures that the space communicates both income levels of natural lighting, the front window and the high window at the back, creating a scale friendlier to customers; transversely it configures the space using folded geometry to clearly divide circulation and exhibition.
Each retail sector is distinguished by a material that is present in the early years of children, using fabric, wicker and wood as hanging-lighting materials. Finally, super-mirror stainless steel is used to make the concrete columns disappear. They re-emerge at two meters height, triggering the geometry of the ceilings that gives identity to the store.