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

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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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• Dan Brunn Architecture