Project: Jeanslab
Architects: URBANJOBS
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Photographs by: Courtesy of URBANJOBS
Jeanslab by URBANJOBS
While creating a gender-neutral space in the design project of the Jeanslab store in Istanbul, the employer’s goal of increasing women’s clothing sales has turned into a challenging problem for Urbanjobs to solve.
In the briefing given to Urbanjobs, store’s sales ratios for men-women’s wear and store entrance details were shared, and finally it was stated that women’s wear ratio should be increased. There was an exciting problem which needs to be resolved for the design team. A venue which embraces everyone regardless of assigned sex should be designed, but the difficult part was that this ratio was given as 70% and 30% by the employer.
Urbanjobs analysed how this traffic will be included in the program based on statistics of digital data and observation. It was decided that while feelings evoked by textures, the ceiling and wall colour tones rather address to a group, masculine modulation forms and their metallic colour ones would address to another group. The design team, having decided that metallic colour should have such toning to attract all groups, obtained a material produced with different mixtures and which does not have a formulation instead of proceeding with a single colour code. The most sensitive spot of this paint applied like lacquer was that the material formed clear, clean, plain, masculine and at the same time feminine, powder-like toning under the light.
Regarding the technical aspect of the design, the concept was that it was designed for chain stores which sells several brands at the same time. The employer had a basic problem; proportional weight of brands sold at each store varied depending on the store’s location. This meant presentation methods of products must change according to the changing product range. While presentation method changed, different furniture typologies emerged and this caused a language integrity separated both at the same venue and between different stores of the brand.
Urbanjobs, for creating a language integrity at these stores which were opened simultaneously and should also be renewed, developed the idea of integrating a single design language. In this context, while same modulations repeated each other, wall systems of a single type could quickly be applied on site, and while language integrity between stores at different locations was provided, the monotony inside the venues was broken thanks to the colour change applied only to the ceiling and differentiation of furnishings inside the venue. The biggest advantage of the system developed by Urbanjobs was while it reduced the production time on site, it also standardized the off-site productions, thus saved time and labour during construction process of the venue, minimized the budget for the employer and more importantly, provided integrity for transition between venues.
This design approach by Urbanjobs was that similar modules repeated themselves but each of them changed functions in itself. Thus, standardized modulation sizes created a plainness away from becoming monotonous while at the same time provided lines as basic members of design to follow each other. The simple but difficult part of this method, applied to provide visual integrity, was to integrate different functions into a single typology and therefore to create a wholistic composition.
-Project description and images provided by URBANJOBS
