Dolce & Gabbana
London
David Chipperfield Architects

Gallerylike Spaces Serve as Backdrops to Italian Fashions

By Marcus Fairs

© Dennis Gilbert

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Italian couturiers Dolce & Gabbana required a design treatment that complemented their exuberant clothes without competing with them. David Chipperfield Architects responded by treating the stores almost as galleries in which the clothes, artfully grouped in ever-changing scenographic "families," instead of hung from rails, become the exhibits.

Chipperfield developed a pared-down palette of luxurious Italian materials and bespoke fittings, annotated in a 180-page construction manual for associate architects around the world. Having perfected the architectural language in flagship D&G stores in Milan’s Via della Spiga and Sardinia’s Portocervo, Chipperfield made his first foray outside Italy in his home city of London. Dolce & Gabbana is now rolling out 14 additional Chipperfield-designed stores from Moscow to Osaka.

The first of two London D&G locations opened on Old Bond Street. The store occupies the ground floor and basement of a 19th-century building close to establishment landmarks such as the Ritz Hotel and the Royal Academy.

The 8,000-square-foot space was stripped to its core and completely reconfigured. A new limestone fascia matching the original stonework—a solution driven by Old Bond Street’s strict conservation laws—presents a discreetly elegant face to passersby.

Set behind the facade is a laminated glass screen dividing the window display area from the retail floor. Each of the nine-by-four-foot panels features black silk chiffon sandwiched between two sheets of strengthened glass, custom- fabricated in Italy.
The key architectural element, a palatial staircase, links the ground and basement levels.

The stairs and balustrades are constructed from 2 3/8-inch-thick basaltina, a silk-smooth, dark gray Italian stone. Basaltina is also used for the cashier’s desk and the stepped display benches that hug the edges of the retail space.

Custom lighting was designed in collaboration with an Italian firm. Fluorescents and adjustable spotlights are housed in aluminum cases faced with polycarbonate diffusers set flush with the ceiling.

A second London store Sloane Street in west London’s elite Knightsbridge shopping district presented the architects with a tighter, 4,000-square-foot space spread over three floors of an unremarkable 1970s building. Dolce & Gabbana’s existing store at the site closed for demolition the day the Old Bond Street flagship opened, to be converted into a boutiquelike store stocking women’s apparel only. The tall, narrow space contrasts with the wide, horizontal floor plate at Old Bond Street. The store employs the same palette of materials, but the absence of conservation restraints permitted greater freedom in the treatment of the facade. Graphite-gray sprayed metal panels developed in Tuscany were used to line the windows at Old Bond Street. At Sloane Street, however, the architects opted to clad the entire facade in the same surfacing to create what project architect Jonathan Wong describes as "a monolithic display of materials."

In the Sloane Street store, a basaltina staircase again is the major design statement, a spiraling circulation route connecting the basement, ground-, and first-floor levels. Hand-crafted teak handrails add a sculptural touch. A chunky vertical stripe of teak is also used on the facade to signal the location of the door—the only intervention in the otherwise entirely metal-and-glass street frontage.

The timber flourishes complement teak display furnishings developed with an Italian furniture company, and which outfit all D&G stores worldwide. Glass display cases are lined with black-stained oak drawers.

See the January 2001 issue of Architectural Record for addition coverage.

Formal name of building:
Dolce & Gabbana

Locations:
London

Gross square footage:
8,000 sq ft

Owner:
Dolce & Gabbana

Architect's firm:
David Chipperfield Architects
Cosham Mews
Agar Grove
London NW1 9SB