Neil Barrett Store by Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid Architects has designed a new Neil Barrett store front in the Minami-Aoyama district of Tokyo. Neil Barrett store is a circular passage allowing the customers to experience the space in multiple ways and interpretations. Zaha Hadid’s architectural works are gaining major praise these days with prominent commissions across the globe (Zaha Hadid herself was the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize).

The concept of the store plays with the complementary characteristics and the related dualism between male and female. The furniture piece on the ground floor is designed as a strong, masculine and dynamic form whilst the piece on the first floor enunciates femininity through more fluid contour lines. The design shifts between architecture and sculpture, where a compact mass of surface layers unravel and fold to form the shelving display and seating.

This interplay between male and female is followed through in the general aesthetic concept , setting the furniture piece with a white smooth Corian finish against the raw fair faced concrete surface of the rest of the space. This is further accentuated through the contrast in colour and finish of the white matt furniture finish against a black glossy floor.