Artclub & Friends has always cared about fostering community among their customers, friends, and the people they work with. For their first store, we wanted to make a physical space that does the same.
The design takes inspiration from the way a lounge functions in the home, as a welcoming space that people are invited into, where you sit around a table and have conversations with friends. Something like a heart. These ideas have followed through to how we arranged the store spatially and the character of the artifacts we use in it. We developed a family of elements that share a distinct design language in colour, shape and material to tie the store together as a whole.
The Artclub & Friends store would have opened in May 2020 at 44 Stanley in Johannesburg. The realities of the Covid-19 pandemic required us to pause the project and think.
Team: Meghan Ho-Tong, Artclub & Friends, Robyn Keyser, Tanya Slater, Hyrax Fabrication.
Year: 2020