Contractor
Blueberry Builders
Millwork / CNC
Prime Design Build + ARC Fabrication
FEIT
Installation Two: Volume and Void
Project Size: 420 sqft
Installation Two: Volume and Void, expands on FEIT's highly praised NYC Flagship with another iconic design that marries raw and natural materials with digital technology. The interior has a unique identity, prioritising process, craft, and innovation, while pushing the tension between what is hand and what is machine made.
The West Village store, designed by artist / designer Jordana Maisie, has a clean aesthetic featuring geometric shapes created by volume and void. Like the Prince Street Flagship, also designed by Maisie, Installation Two incorporates a timber palette with carvings that open up sight lines both within the store, and to the street.
Similar to the process of moulding leather to a last, when 3D modelling the store, Maisie used volumetric moulds to carve out display spaces within the slatted timber mass, the removal of the mould revealing the display space created.
The choice to design a store that could only be fabricated by employing CNC technology was a conscious one. Maisie was interested in exploring the synergy and tension between what is hand and what is machine made. Each unique shape was CNC cut, hand sanded and assembled into modules offsite by the fabrication team, which enabled a complex build sequence to unroll on site.
Mirror was used to open the space up and amplify the transparency of the birch ply installation. Both the architectural and lighting design play with your perception of depth, as you try to distinguish where the boundaries within the space lie. From an electric lighting perspective, the experience of the store will differ by season as adjustable white LED’s change in colour temperature in accordance with summer, fall, winter, and spring. This detail adds an element of comfort to contrast the discord of the city outside.