Text by Fumiko Takahama Architects: This is a branch store of eyewear brand Jins at Tokyu Hands Department Store in Ikebukuro. Jins’ regular store designs are composed of wooden toolbox-like cabinets. The challenge was to propose a unique spatial experience simultaneously maintaining the association with its regular stores by using the existing furniture modules as well as wood.

The solution we found is simple. We chose wooden pallets – the flat transport structure normally used in logistics – as the base of the space components and derived all types of furniture from them. In this way, on one hand, the furniture gives the casualness and familiarity of mass-produced products to the store space and creates a friendly and accessible atmosphere for men and women of all ages. On the other hand, the pallet-derived set of furniture in the warehouse-like space evokes a narrative of the eyewear products being transported with the pallets and displayed for sale on them.

This fictional narrative between the products and the furniture makes the existence and the meaning of the furniture strong, and it plays an important role to make the customers’ purchasing experience special and unique. The pallets of island-type furniture are stacked on top of each other slightly displaced deliberately so that they look like they are roughly stacked in a warehouse. At the same time, the pallets are finished with highly glossy urethane coating, and the bottom pallet is without deck boards not to look too heavy as well as to keep floor clearance for easy cleaning. These considerations show they are thought-through, quality pieces of furniture. 

Wall furniture, seating and mirrors are created by adjusting their shapes to satisfy each function while inheriting the gene and context of the pallet. Also, the walls and floors are painted with random patterned graphics that look like pieces of wallpaper stripped off at a construction site, and the company name and the sequential numbers are stencilled on every piece of furniture with original typography to give the impression of mass-produced products.

The accumulation of these details gives the furniture a clean and elegant appearance that blends with the casualness of pallet and plywood, while complementing the world of the narrative using pallets as a display in a warehouse. We believe the innovative part of our interior design is that the context of the pallet, a mass-produced standardized product which already used widely in a different circumstances, meets a retail use of eyewear products and, as a result, the products tell a narrative and appeal to the customers’ emotion.