KKI Sweets and The Little Drom: shaped by plywood

The plane is designed as a porous trellis so that the entire diagram can be observed and experienced from within.
A standout design project created by Singaporean studio Produce uses plywood and an imaginative approach to separate two retail stores: KKI Sweets and The Little Drom. The two different spaces share a storefront within the School of the Arts (SOTA) Building, so a significant focus of the brief was to distinguish the identities of both brands. The larger of the two spaces belongs to KKI Sweets which sells intricate Japanese-inspired French desserts. Internal partitioning form little ‘rooms’ housing the products. Produce’s strategy draws influence from the architecture of the university building itself. Using a concept of having walls which segregate and cut through a ‘datum plane’, this has resulted in a porous nature seen within and outside both the shops. The timber planes form the shelves and also diverse seating opportunities. In the KKI Sweets section, volumes above the plane have created openings providing light, while the volumes below are adapted to form the practical requirements, such as tables, shelves, and the elevated seating spaces. Diagram showing two retail spaces with a shared ‘datum plane’ concept. The plane continues into The Little Drom store inversely. Instead of forming voids, it occupies a volume that forms the floor of a ‘tree house’ – a theme closely related to the brand itself. The primary materials are maple veneered plywood for the volumes and solid pine strips for the trellis. Although both retail shops share the concept of a datum plane, they visualise as separate and independent entities. The light wood wrapped interior instills a sense of lightness. An ‘internal street’ cuts between the two spaces, and their facades and signage orientate towards each other. The primary materials used are maple veneered plywood for the volumes and solid pine strips for the trellis. A porous nature has been achieved. The light colors of the wood act as a blank canvas, allowing the brightly colored products to stand out and at the same time, contrasting against the darker colors of the SOTA atrium. The timber frame acts like a blank canvas in which the two shops can be filled with colors with a variety of products. An alleyway cuts in between the two spaces with their façades facing each other.   Original content written by Natasha Kwok and published on Designbloom. Republished with permission under Creative Commons licence from Designbloom, the world’s first and most popular digital architecture and design magazine. Images from Produce.

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