Dior’s first home will always be 30 Avenue Montaigne, which was recently redesigned by Peter Marino, but the firm has a longer history of articulating the brand through architecture. Past collaborations with OMA and SANAA in Tokyo, and a prominently articulated facade design by Christian de Portzamparc in Seoul, are examples of this. Last April, the couture fashion house opened its ninth outpost in Qatar. The Aranda\Lasch-designed storefront in Place Vendôme is the largest Dior interior facade in the world.
Place Vendôme was designed by the Arab Engineering Bureau to emulate classical French interiors across 148,000 square meters (1.6 million square feet) of luxury retail space.
Dior’s storefront rises 22 meters (72 feet), and was inspired by “the brands legendary couture,” as the architects described. Seeking to represent the brand’s “dynamic, etherial” qualities “crafted with precision,” the facade was designed in three components: a main interior facade; a secondary, layered-glass interior facade; and the exterior facade. The final facade pattern specifically draws visual connection to Dior’s Fall 2018 Couture show under creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri.
The post Aranda\Lasch pulls from Dior’s work to design a pleated facade for the brand’s Lusail storefront appeared first on The Architect’s Newspaper.
