Bukiya, Paris, 2011

A Japanese goods shop located in the heart of Paris's Japanese quarter. The space was most likely once a loge, the concierge's room commonly found in Parisian apartment buildings. Often squeezed into leftover corners, these rooms tended to have unusual geometries. As resident concierges gradually disappeared after the 1960s, many were transformed into the small shops that now animate the Parisian streetscape. Its unusual geometry comes directly from that history. The curved rear wall is in fact the outer wall of an elegant oval staircase behind it. With no straight walls and not a single right angle, the space semed almost resistant to the idea of a conventional shop. Rather than fighting these constraints, the design embraces them. The walls become continuous curved surfaces, turning the unusual geometry into the shop's identity. Instead of shelves, products are simply hung from the walls, as is often seen in Japan. Yet it also felt wrong to make everything curved. A small box inserted around two central columns introduces flat surfaces and allows the cashier functions to be integrated within it. A leftover space from Parisian housing meets a bazaar of curious Japanese objects. The resulting interior is a hybrid of straight and distorted surfaces, shaped by the meeting of these two stories.

Photos : Ryo Suzuki