Best of Year: Retail

Deborah Wilk -- Interior Design, 12/1/2010 11:12:00 AM

Project: Victor Churchill
Firm: Dreamtime Australia Design
Location: Woollahra, Australia

It’s a familiar yet odd sensation. Sweeney Todd meets Van Cleef & Arpels at Australia’s oldest continually operating butcher shop, established in 1876 in a tony Sydney suburb. Once past the glossy green facade, with its copper-trimmed vitrine, customers enter 2,000 square feet of veritable theater, anchored by slabs of book-matched Calacatta marble. The main performance takes place in a glassed-in room, as skilled butchers carve perfect cuts of meat and poultry on the tops of massive oak cylinders. A sandstone wall, unearthed during the renovation, serves as a backdrop to the action. Backlit Himalayan salt bricks play a similar role in the adjacent cool room, where carcasses age on a revolving rack. Opposite, copper-fronted refrigerators hold steaks, chops, pâtés, and terrines. Adding whimsy to the drama, the daily special is placed on a pedestal, under a glass dome, and the restroom is papered in a pattern that looks like sausages.

Merit Winners:


Project: Prologue
Firm: Ministry of Design
Location: Singapore
Standout: Customers encounter bookcases clad in plastic laminate before taking the epoxy-finished steel stairs up to the stationery department.


Project: Kubrick Bookshop
Firm: One Plus Partnership
Location: Beijing
Standout: Powder-coated steel appears everywhere from the display modules to the pivoting panels that close off the cash register and membership counter.


Project: Brother & Sister
Firm: MarkZeff
Location: Hong Kong
Standout: Peruse the decorative objects, jewelry, and limited-edition sneakers, all showcased in vitrines with burnished-bronze frames, or digest it all in the café


Project: Galerie BSL
Firm: Agence Néonata
Location: Paris
Standout: A ribbon of white solid-surfacing starts as a low platform, flows outward to become flooring, rises along a sidewall, and doubles back as a canopy.