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2024 GFD 🏆 Awards

Gold Winner | EQLZ HOOD_SHANGHAI POLO | RNP

We are not a follower of trends, nor do we fight against trends, but we are keen to find new thinking in design. EQLZ all stories come from the basketball genes. This retail design project Located at 271 Fumin Road, Shanghai, the store adheres to the brand’s authentic attitude, transforming the original Polo restaurant kitchen, which is full of city memories, into a gathering place for the baller culture.

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Gold 🏆 Winner
Global Future Design Awards 2024

EQLZ HOOD_SHANGHAI POLO
Commercial Interior (Built)

Firm
RNP

Architect/Designer
Kevin Chen, Yi Zhang

Design Team
Niki Luo, Shirley Zhang, Bing Zhao, Karen Wang, Jeff Wu

Location
Shanghai City, China

Country
China

Photographer/Copyright
©Xi Gua

Website
N/A

Instagram
N/A

The project is a renovation of the old building – Polo restaurant kitchen, and the integration of historical, cultural and commercial values was deeply considered during the planning. This renovation is not only a physical transformation of the space, but also a presentation of the humanistic spirit that the brand and design team attach importance to. Be authentic, stories in details, timeless design is the fun of this project.

The structure of the original building is completely preserved in the space design. The decorative lines on the wall are from 1990s, the broken marks on the concrete columns, and the wall marks inadvertently left by the workers during the various changes in the past 30 years create a timeless space. Combined with the brand’s futuristic design products, we use aluminum raw materials and materials that refuse to be too industrialized to design a smart shelf that breaks through the traditional display and can meet a variety of functional needs.

In order to echo the texture left by years and the original spirit of the brand, we used recycled wood panels, random corrosion treatment of partial decorative iron plates, and the addition of unpolished aluminum plates made of shelves, forming a flow of time and emotional touch. This has formed a strong contrast in the modern city, hoping to bring consumers more than the project itself.

The treatment of all walls in the space is just surface cleaning without any retreatment, which greatly reduces carbon emissions. In the transmission installation, the mechanical principle is also used to achieve manual operation, and the skylight on the top of the original building is retained to bring in more natural light, so as to reduce the consumption of electric energy during the day. We believe preservation and reusing cost the least consumption.

During the design process, the original building experienced many changes, resulting in many uncertainties of the original building structure, and the use of awkward local space problems. Through in-depth understanding of the needs of the brand, we use some transmission installation to make efficient use of each space, and lifted the capacity of the storage.

We would like to tell the brand stories and gene in those detail narrative as a humble way. Like the stone lion from Suzhou Garden steps on a basketball, and the wall is pasted with the old newspaper about basketball news in the 1990s. These inadvertent details directly hit the heart.

Through considerations and designs in aspects such as “integrating the characteristics of old Shanghai, highlighting brand personality, breaking traditional aesthetics, creating a brand-new brand image, emphasizing humanistic care, and sustainable development concepts”, we have created a brand image store space for EQLZ that not only embodies the historical and cultural characteristics of old Shanghai but also is full of modernity, injecting new vitality and momentum into the brand’s development.