Indigo - Saddlecreek
Indigo is a women’s boutique that was looking to re-brand within the minimal tenant improvement allowance. The store had been operating in a reconfigured, nationally-branded men’s store, which is why it was in need of developing an image more consistent with the boutique’s brand, while also enlarging the sales area and streamlining both merchandise and staff flow.
The project treats the tenant space as a painted shell, and places a landscape of planes and objects inside the shell to perform various functions. A white oak floor plane grounds the store sales area and wraps the display platforms in the storefront windows. In the store’s center, a portion of the floor plane is raised, separated, and bent to create two folded planes. The folded planes bookend a mirrored volume (a storage closet and a room-sized mirror) and shelter other objects: plaster changing rooms and a dark wood-veneered cash wrap. Light boxes provide indirect lighting and display shelving is embedded in the folded planes. The area uncovered by the raised folded planes is lined with an indigo-dyed carpet to further the brand throughout the store.
In an environment where retail success hinges on the ability to showcase a wide and constantly changing array of inventory, the design uses scale and natural materials as formatting devices, thereby creating a template for the diverse content that it holds.
