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Many Architects shun the notion of decoration—less is more and all that.

There is a misconception among many designers that the top floor of a department store may as well be Siberia. Retailers tend to banish offices up there, far from quick-selling items like cosmetics and handbags on lower floors. After more than a decade designing upper-level hospitality and retail spaces like the OXO Tower Restaurant for Harvey Nichols in London and a dining/food hall emporium for Milan’s La Rinascente, architecture firm Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (LDS) sees opportunity in the heights. “Most architects don’t understand that the retailer constantly changes what happens on the floor,” says Paul Sandilands, a director at the

Fusing Art And Architecture, fine artists Edward Lam and Deborah Moss frequently collaborate with architects, interior designers, and other clients to make custom, richly detailed works of art'many of them for international restaurants, hotels, and established retailers such as Sofitel and Louis Vuitton. When commissioned by the South Korean department store Lotte to fill a central atrium in its Seoul emporium, the partners and founders of the Toronto-based design studio created a dazzling seven-story mobile made of reflective gold and silver butterflies, crystals, and glass beads. The atrium, Lam explains, brings light and air down into spaces that are frequently

Commissioned to design a small suite of offices in a noisy cardboard factory near Ben Gurion Airport, in Israel, architect Irit Axelrod decided to create an interior that asserts a sense of 'quiet power.'

With the concept of modern comfort in mind, the architects stripped the apartment down to the studs and built it back up with new drywall, flooring, fixtures, and finishes.

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

One look lengthwise in a sun-speckled upper room is all it takes to see a spectrum of ideas at play in Gerhards & Gl'cker's exhibit pieces for the Saxon castle of Albrechtsburg, in eastern Germany.

Andre Kikoski Architect designs an elegant restaurant inside New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.