An Olive Tree Takes Center Stage in L.A. Boutique

Dan Brunn Architecture unveils the new flagship RTA boutique, where an olive tree garden by landscape artist Hitoshi Kitajima takes center stage.

By Maja Dezulovic
Jul. 5, 2017 09:05 UTC
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Dan Brunn Architecture recently unveiled the com­ple­tion of their ren­o­va­tion of the flag­ship Los Angeles Road To Awe fash­ion bou­tique in which an olive tree takes the spot­light. The archi­tec­ture firm worked with Japanese land­scape designer Hitoshi Kitajima.

The olive tree was planted in a patch of gravel and grows upwards towards a round sky­light in the 1970s Melrose Avenue store.

The archi­tec­ture firm wanted to cre­ate a sense of won­der­ment in the space so they teamed up with the land­scaper to cre­ate the patch of nature within the designer build­ing. Added to this effect is a pair of spin­ning dis­play mir­rors which reflect the tree, enhanc­ing the nat­ural set­ting and serv­ing as shelv­ing with cus­tom wood boxes at the back of the mir­rors.

The set­ting is invit­ing, play­ing to our desire to seek nat­ural sur­round­ings. A semi-cir­cu­lar bench is placed below the tree, where cus­tomers can sit and view palm trees on the out­side, which can be seen through the sky­light.

An inte­rior gar­den con­tributes calm and brings a man­nered sense of nature into the scene,” the stu­dio rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­mented. The tree is planted under a sky­light that mir­rors the turf/bench cir­cle and fil­ters sun­shine into the space.”

The rest of the store is a min­i­mal­is­tic set­ting with open spaces, wooden sur­faces, white walls and con­crete floor­ing. Clothing hangs around the gar­den from black­ened steel beams which hang from the ceil­ing.

The dark pan­els and sharp edges com­ple­ment the spot­lighted tree by cre­at­ing a dark con­trast to the set­ting. This is only bro­ken by a sin­gle strip of light that runs up the wall, form­ing a cross with the ceil­ing; which serves to rep­re­sent the T” in the RTA logo.

At the space’s mid­point, an imag­i­nary line cre­ated by the sales desk and the slab bench appears to slice’ a cir­cu­lar seat, cre­at­ing an align­ment with the edges of the other fur­ni­ture,” the designer explained.

Dan Brunn Architecture has been design­ing and devel­op­ing com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial projects around the world since 2005. The com­pany prides itself on craft­ing archi­tec­ture that respects the site and pro­vokes a sen­su­ous inter­ac­tion with the envi­ron­ment,” as is evi­dent in the bou­tique space.



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