Owner: Chanel

Completion Date: September 2010

Program: A single-story, 4,170-square-foot Chanel boutique located in the heart of SoHo. The store includes a ready-to-wear department, a watch corner, a beauty and fragrance area, a handbag bar, and a shoe section.

Design concept and solution: Inspired by SoHo's artistic history, the architects sought to channel classic Chanel motifs and the New York art world with specially commissioned fixtures and artworks. When customers enter, they are met by a 10-foot-tall acrylic bottle of Chanel No. 5 outfitted with screens that play brand-themed videos. The interior finishes are classic Chanel black and white: a sleek white stretch ceiling, black-and-white polished cast-concrete floors, and custom tweed carpets that set off the watch collection and Ready-to-Wear. Throughout the store artist-designed finishes and installations offer a more rough-edged variation on the theme of black and white. In the watch corner, a wall installation by Peter Belyi uses fluorescent tube lighting wrapped with rubber to form mottled strips of light. At the far end of the store, in Ready-to-Wear, Gregor Hildebrandt's Record Wall turns stacks of molded vintage records into columns that spiral up to the ceiling. And the fitting room doors double as frames for oil-on-vellum abstractions by the painter Robert Greene.

Location: 139 Spring Street, New York, NY

Architect and Designer:
Peter Marino Architect
150 East 58 Street
New York, NY 10022
Tel: 212 752 5444
Fax: 212 759 3727
www.petermarinoarchitect.com