The Shoe Box, flagship store for chic Pedder Red shoes, was designed to captivate the brand’s image through interior architecture.

The design concept revolves around a bold insertion: the stained-oak wooden box that stands vertically through the two-story store. This box within a box provides a strong visual identity for the retail brand. The stained-oak box is adorned with woven wooden details, which draw inspiration from a shoe’s stitching. Various punched openings in the box surface reveal a bright red world inside.

The wooden box functions as the main storage area for the shoe store, something that is often tucked away behind hidden spaces. The placement of the storage area as an essential core of the design celebrates an extremely active and significant feature of the mundane retail business: storage. The red interior storage sanctum is the heart of the store, negotiating between the shopper and the sales staff from shoe to shoe.

In front of the wooden box is a carefully composed facade of brass-framed glass, recessed to allow some relief on the narrow Wellington Street. The scale of the store window engages passersby on a human scale and the revealing glass front contrasts the monolithic wooden box inside, inviting shoppers inside for that perfect pair of shoes.