From Forum AID no 4.07 (Filtered)

Acne Studio Södermalm
Andreas Fornell

The Acne empire is growing. Yet another boutique saw the light of day in the autumn in Stockholm and soon doors will open on boutiques in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. All designed by the company in-house architect Andreas Fornell.

It is 10 years since Acne’s designer Jonny Johansson had 100 pairs of unwashed jeans sewn up to give his family and friends. Today Acne Jeans has become a top trademark with worldwide distribution. Its seventh concept boutique – Acne Studio Södermalm opened recently. Now a further international expansion is expected, with shops in Hamburg and London amongst other places. Andreas Fornell, Acne’s head architect, is responsible for the plans. “I have the best job in the world. My ambition is to design furniture with the same attitude to the product as a fashion designer. Designer Hussein Chalayan is unbelievably inspiring. What he does is just as much about architecture as fashion”, he says.
He trained as a cabinet maker at the Carl Malmsten Centre, but has also worked with architect Per Söderberg and as a carpenter. For the last few years Fornell has been responsible for Acne’s boutiques, showrooms, trade fairs and window displays. 
Acne Studio Södermalm is situated on Nytorgsgatan in Stockholm. The interior is discreet but grand in its design. Chessboard-square floors with chalk-white walls. Rows of wooden tables, where the polish has been so carefully chosen that you hardly dare touch it. Clothes combinations hang along the walls on rails of steeltubing. But in one corner a spartan stepladder nonchalantly leans against a wardrobe full of clothes, shoes and accessories.
“The furniture is discreet and manufactured by skilful craftsmen,” Fornell points out.
Great attention has been paid to construction and function. It can take time to choose the theme for a concept boutique.
“We want to energise our clothes, but simultaneously offer a sophisticated shopping experience. Pablo Picasso and his photo studios have been the starting point for this creative process,” he says.
What is going to happen in the future?
“We open in Hamburg, then Paris, London and Amsterdam,” says Fornell.
“But first a pale turquoise man’s shop-in-shop at Illums in Copenhagen. And a monochrome apricot-coloured boutique in Oslo. There we will recreate stucco work and stone floors. The premises formerly housed a watchmaker, who left a fine old Swiss clock on the facade.”

‘My ambition is to design furniture with the same attitude to the product as a fashion designer’

Text: Ida Pyk
Photo: Ola Bergengren

From Forum AID no 3.07 (Review)

Filippa K
Address: Grev Turegatan 18, Stockholm
Architect: Aaro Arkitekter/Björn Aaro, Marianne Aaro, Pontus Ekberg
Area: approx. 400 sq m
Completed: March 2007

Mark: Three out of five F

The moment of truth for a brand is the physical encounter with the client. In this way a thorough boutique concept, that is to say the concept as to how the brand communicates through architecture, merchandising and graphic communication, amongst other things, weighs heavily. When it comes to international expansion the demand increases for commercial clarity as well as in the advantage of large-scale production, which within the retail trade leads to an increasingly important role for architecture. Filippa K’s latest boutique concept, launched in the same premises where the chain opened its first boutique ten years ago, is intended to be: “trendsetting for the other boutiques internationally”.

Aaro Arkitekter have used a great deal of skill and managed to transform a spatial problem into three large and three small rooms that all manage to give a picture of Filippa K and make the visitor forget that the shop is actually housed in a cellar. White, white and a little black is the basis of the shop which moves from personally expressive, as in a unique wall painting by Jesper Waldersten and a circular party collection room covered in platinum mosaic, to quietly inspirational, as in both the still and moving pictures of the collections as well as  a simple and obvious exposure of the clothes. The lighting, supplied by Flux, that sometimes demands that you have to squint, plays an important role, also in the shining tables and colour-shifting walls of light.  The first impression is somewhat anaemic, this white minimalist style has almost been done to death, but on closer inspection it is the details that give it that little extra touch. Just as with the Filippa K clothes. The concept’s shop decorator Eva Lilja Lövenhielm has introduced design-related additions for inspiration and to make the shop more personal. Examples of this are books and magazines for a moment’s browsing, and Jamie Hayon’s fantastic table light Funghi. Yet another brand-harmonising detail is the fact that glasses and a carafe for thirsty shoppers are placed on the long, beautiful Corian water bench.

The concept at Grev Turegatan will work even better once a slight light adjustment has been made and outside Sweden it will even have a good chance of creating a wow effect within the brand’s style and price range.

Susanne Helgeson