Designed by F.O.G. Architecture, clothing store Xiaozhuo foregoes traditional window displays to offer its customers valuable space for socializing.

Key features

Xiaozhuo – a high-end fashion brand based in China – recently opened the doors to its new boutique in Shanghai. The designers replaced the façade of an existing building with a transparent glass wall wrapping around the structure’s corner, allowing the internal space to spill out onto two streets at once. The roof has been covered in canvas, giving it a lightweight, upholstered look, as if levitating above the ground. An intermediary, pavilion-like space is produced below, articulated by tiled surfaces and steel columns, and its function is left open to different uses. As the customer enters the main shopping area – clearly separated with a warmer cream colour and tactile features – they are presented with playful visual motifs referencing the art of tailoring. Sinuous metallic pipes twist across the store like thread, piercing into the surrounding surfaces, while oversized buttons and zips anchor these spatial interventions to the floors and walls.

FRAME’s take

The shopping experience is one of dynamicity and movement – a building should reflect this state of flux in its programmatic arrangement and spatial design. Bernard Tschumi, an architect whose theories F.O.G. Architecture references in its work, emphasizes that architecture must consider activity and events as much as it does space and form. The designers tap into this logic, rejecting the commercial nature of the shopfront window. Instead, they stretch this typically inaccessible space and transform it into an area for socialization and interaction. Cleverly on show, this space acts as a visual bridge between the interior and exterior, actively engaging with the street outside. By bringing people together from across the neighbourhood, the brand is able to extend its offer beyond simple transaction, forge meaningful relationships with its customers and build a loyal – and local – brand community. 

On its shopfloor, Xiaozhuo provides a more identity-driven encounter with its products, balancing out the undefined nature of the open event space. Leveraging this programmatic diversity allows the brand to generate a wider variety of experiences in-store.