Aisles And Islands

Maria Shollenbarger -- Interior Design, 5/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Firm: Hugh A. Boyd Architects

Site: Manila

The firm now known as Hugh A. Boyd Architects has specialized in food retail over a period of almost 20 years, with a focus on high-end, boutique purveyors and farmers' markets. So how did the firm's name get attached to Landmark, a Manila mega-market and food court encompassing 146,000 square feet with a seating capacity of 1,400? "The CEO of Landmark liked what I did at New York's Grand Central Market," Hugh A. Boyd explains.

His task in Manila was a daunting one: Translate the super-sleek, hyper-designed aesthetic that has swept Asian shops and fast-food joints so it works in a space of Wal-Mart proportions. The interior's huge structural columns set the course, because reinforcing them to handle four additional levels yielded an aesthetically awkward shape, expanding from 5 feet in diameter at the base to 8 or 9 feet at the top. To camouflage some of these monsters, Boyd enclosed them in enormous fiberglass bowls, spackled them, and painted on a bird-of-paradise motif. The bowls' shape begat the round and oval food stations and counters; winding walkways and curving partitions followed. "There's some nice glass tile we imported from China," Boyd says, pointing out the wall behind the butcher counter. "For the rest, it's actually pretty simple. If you look closely, you'll see it's mostly a lot of painted drywall!" Often the simplest ingredients yield the most satisfying results.

From top: At the Landmark supermarket and food court, produce is displayed in islands of stainless steel and glass. Reinforced structural columns 10½ feet tall rise between café tables. A partition of cutout plasterboard separates the café area from the rest of the porcelain-tiled floor.

From top: Glass tiles clad the wall behind the butcher counter. For security reasons, the wine department is walled off from the rest of the store. Its name appears in vinyl on glass panels between supermarket and food court.

FROM FRONT HUSSMANN: CUSTOM DISPLAY CASES (PRODUCE). RAMLER: TABLES, CHAIRS (CAFÉ). KING STONE: CUSTOM PARTITION, COUNTER. EUROCRYOR: DISPLAY CASES (BUTCHER). THROUGHOUT LUNGO CERAMICS: FLOORING. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. LIGHTING PRACTICE: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. LESLIE EVANS DESIGN: GRAPHICS CONSULTANT. CONSTECH: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.