Architecture Meets ... the Hugo Boss Concept Store

Retail design offers architects a way to bring their design aesthetic to the small scale. Not to mention, product design and architecture really are not all that different. Both require considerations of flow, utility, space, context, and interaction. Which goes to explian why some of the greats - Hadid, Saarinen, Gehry and Wright have had a hand in producing everything from chairs to watches to earrings.

Opened in 2008, the Hugo Boss Concept Store in MePa offers a great example of how retail products, high end fashion and architecture blend together seamlessly. A collaboration between Seattle based Callison and Italian firm Matteo Thun brought this 4000 sq foot space to life. Inspired by rough urban surfaces, textures and raw concrete, iron and wood, the store offers visitors a feel that is rugged yet decidedly intimate.

Architecture Meets ... the Diana Center

For my first post, it's only fitting that I introduce a building that is changing the way one Manhattan college interacts with the storied neighborhood where its campus resides.

As the oft-forgotten sister of Columbia, Barnard College is a small all-female liberal arts school known for its selective admissions and academic standards. What's most interesting about this school, however, is its ability to adapt its campus to the small four acre parcel of land between 116th and 120th streets in Morningside Heights. Wedged between Claremont Ave and Broadway, the dozen building school is dwarfed by the nearby Columbia campus and bordered by a four lane thoroughfare, rendering it nearly unnoticeable, save for the fortress that is the Vincent Kling designed McIntosh Center. A towering structure of concrete and dark glass, the building seems harsh admist the low rise brick-and-stones surrounding it, adding insult (and an eyesore) to the already beleaguered campus. And thus, with a disconjointed plan and spaces that harbor little connectivity (both in design and flow), it looked as if Barnard would be destined to remain Columbia's ugly stepsister.