Beautiful People UNSEEN ARCHIVES DURING THE PANDEMIC

Assemble, Disassemble, Re-Assemble Due to the battle against Coronavirus and the end of the pandemic’s tunnel remains unpredictable as the state of emergency continues, in the world of fashion, many brands were bound to temporary close their stores, consequently, many collections were never to appear in boutiques. 

From this context, this Archive Pop-up store opened with the concept of “taking into consideration and give attention to all materials”. The form of Pop-up stores has a limit in time, meaning, construction begins with the mind of deconstruction, moreover, in a short time frame. In a cycle where scrap and build is rapidly progressing, our mission to decrease industrial waste at the time of deconstruction became ever so important. For that reason, our design process was to design beyond the normal scope, the scope after deconstruction, hence, a back-calculate method where we start from designing from the end in mind. 

We chose a pre-furnished location, a store that has not been disassembled yet from the previous owned store. In the time of Covid, there were many vacant locations, therefore we recycled the store itself and fully utilized resources that had already existed, such as the walls, hanger racks, and lighting. Apart from those existing components, everything else are architected only with “LGS” (Lightweight Gauge Steel), our iconic material and a well-known material normally used in the framing systems throughout the interior wall structure. The LGS were used for floors and tables, creating a glossy reflection and a cohesive environment with the new and the old. 

We designed outside the box and used what was previously used as framing systems for walls and extended them to floors and tables, realizing functionality with limited resource. In addition, we created a chair, homage to Enzo Mari’s DIY project “sedia 1” using the LGS. This chair represents the process of a “back-calculate method”. At the day of the Pop-up closing, we incorporated a DIY process of reusing the floor LGS to rebuild chairs from them which are planned to be used as furniture and in other stores. 

We intentionally used a 20mm x 40mm LGS, a thinner version, so that they could be compounded to a chair. The LGS materials that were used for the floors did not end there and have a life beyond. For us designers, what can we do to support the world of sustainability. There are infinite answers to this question, however, we think we can start from re-thinking and re-action what is right in front of us. In our traditional process of design, our goal and pursuit is to create a store. However, rather than creating then ending the story with destruction, we incorporated an additional feature to the design process, to “Re-create”. 

Assemble, Disassemble, then Re-Assemble. By integrating this additional adventure and designing with the consideration of the end in mind, we believe allows us to create a new circulation of resources. Every material should have its next chance.