The Illy Café has brought up the Illy Shop as the temporary shop located in Milano. It is specifically situated in Galleria San Carlo around the Duomo. The store design was the resulting structure for the concept of reconfigurable store space which is made distinct by different modulations of a single element. The single element modulated and repeated throughout the retail design is the “cube” which is a 45 by 45 square centimeter base. Architect Caterina Tiazzoldi was the designer and architect for this commercial design.

The designer and architect – Caterina Tiazzoldi was based from Turin and New York who furnished the Illy Shop as a space with nothing but white cubes customized in order to fit coffee tins and espresso machines inside the structures.

Caterina Tiazzoldi has design a store that utilizes a grasshopper definition it has been a parametric device and it was possible to manipulate the cubes as well as its physical properties by customizing the depth, thickness, opacity, length and explosions of each cube so that even though it has been a repeated single element it will still demonstrate a certain level of uniqueness on its design making it stand out and definitely a great design for retail.

The combination of logic utilized in the project made it a very beautiful store worthy of time and praise. It has been inspired by the process of genetic algorithms that was permitted to perform more than 3000 configurations of the same element or object so that each object produced is a unique configuration than the others.

The shop has been created with 200 cubes and each cube has been specifically designed to adapt different sizes and configurations where Illy Café products are displayed and showcased. The 200 cubes become a perfect display mechanism which made the products stand out. Even the counter, tasting table and rubbish bins were also made from cubes and the amazing store has the lighting fixtures that complement the interior design well.

The storage, video frames and communication space also follow the same module making the store space define what a place of cubes really mean. The adaptation of different modules depending on the required performances such as accessibility of products from the exterior, number of displayed items, level of transparency and the product sizes has made it feasible to demonstrate the different characteristics of Illy products without compromising on the right fit, location and design.

This is a particular system that creates disoriented expansion yet attractive when left on its own.

Posted by JackieAzuela at 25 January, 2012

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