Max Mara Soho
New York, New York
Duccio Grassi Architects

A dramatic setting for women’s clothing boldly uses concrete, walnut, and rusted steel

© Paul Warchol

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

By Suzanne Stephens

Max Mara, the fashion house based near Milan, is known for a strong geometrical cut in its women’s clothes, which also feature a color palette that veers from beige to brown to black, and textures that are as sleek as steel or as nubbly as brick. In other words, the clothes seem to be inspired by architecture. Small wonder the company felt the architectural design of its shop was important to reinforce its style identity.

With its new downtown store in New York’s SoHo, Max Mara wanted both to grab the shopper’s attention and provide a design appropriate to its clothing. Its new, one-story structure is on West Broadway, on a lot leased on a long-term basis, where the Italian office of Duccio Grassi Architects came up with a two-level scheme. In its expansive interior, walnut-laminated trusses and slatted partitions, precast and poured-in-place concrete, as well as rusted and natural steel are deployed through a trapezoidally configured volume.

The drama begins on the sidewalk, where a slatted wall 21 feet and 7 inches high, placed on an angle with the building line, directs the visitor to the entrance. As the slanted wall suggests, Grassi organized the interior elements and spaces according to two overlapping grids, one of which shifts 20 degrees off the orthogonal grid established by the L-shaped structure. Meanwhile, the visitor, who may well be oblivious to such maneuvers, meanders through the first retail space, which is 10 feet high, and is gradually drawn to a light well at the rear. Here, a skylighted atrium, with an inserter stair, reveals a lower level devoted to more clothing. Architecture is deployed to heighten the experience of shopping: The only way to access the additional clothing is by detouring through a larger space purveying merchandise, here spanned by three laminated walnut trusses and punctuated by another, smaller skylight. Here, too, the building’s concrete-block walls are lined with large panels of precast concrete that ripple like pieces of a quilt and seem sewn together by large stainless-steel cables. Steel channels inserted between the first and second rows of the panels can be used for hanging clothes, while other items are arranged in movable steel racks, some of which have leather and mirror panels. The modular design of these cagelike units incorporates both shelving or hanging bars used as display devices. More surfaces for showing shoes, bags, and scarves are provided by clustered islands of rectangular volumes formed of white solid surfacing, sheet metal, or leather cushions. Along one wall, rusted steel panels conceal dressing rooms, which are lined in white solid surfacing and mirrors.

As visitors descend the cantilevered poured-in-place-concrete stair, rotated on a 20-degree angle aligned with the trusses and the entry plane, they arrive first at a wood display wall, in which polygonal shelves, equipped with lights on their undersides, pop out like drawers. The main retail space of this lower level retains the quilted concrete wall of the upstairs space; in this instance, the ceiling is exposed metal decking, painted white.

The artificial lighting throughout is programmed to supplement illumination from the two skylights; the skylights themselves seem weightless, for the glass is supported by stainless-steel fingers, rather than the heavier mullions usually seen elsewhere. Since the steel column-and-beam structure of the store is painted white, it too seems to disappear.

See the October 2002 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Max Mara Soho

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
6,105 sq. ft.

Owner:
Max Mara USA
530 7th Ave. New York, NY 10018
Tel: 212 302 1221
Fax: 212 302 1134

Architect / Interior Designer:
Duccio Grassi Architects
Via Fontanelli, 10
Reggio Emilia, Italy 42100
Tel. (+39) 0522 452928
Fax (+39) 0522 453267
info@studiograssi.com