<Red> 
The birth of a brand. The manufacturing of products. The stories told by Joyce, a designer who has finally stepped out into the world after years of incubation, became the key to conceptualizing the overall context for her store space. I thought about her passion and how it was able to manifest as a brand producing a series of vibrant products, and that made me associate her with a womb, the origin of new life and birth. The womb here should be understood as a description rooted in maternal instincts and not simply as the meaning or value of biological birth. Inside the womb, where identity and ultimate physicality are bestowed, endless possibilities meet maternal instincts to create an absolute being. The unrealistically distorted reflection of the external space inside the red interior symbolizes the phantom that we refuse to acknowledge. The interior space is exempted from the actual rules of reality because decisions and latent conditions inside a womb are naturally unrelated to the external social order.

<Rails and Objet>
On the rails in the floor leading out from this store, there’s a cart loaded with unknown objects being carried out from the red inner space. The objects piled up on the cart seem obtuse and irregular, even ugly. They follow the principles of abnormality, primitivism, the nature of beasts, defying the authority of design and its brutal formalization based in the totalitarian ideology. In earlier days, Theodor Adorno associated beauty with singularity, unity, rationalism, and consistency, while describing ugliness as having many facades, implying that superiority of particularity defines the superiority of individuality. The seemingly useless and ugly objects loaded onto the cart move along the rails, creating a breach in the static image of a space, and through the intervention of movement, the space forces the viewers to dismantle their prejudiced idea of a commercial space. Such interpretation can also render the space as a form of protest against the industrial system which recognizes the totalitarian idea of beauty as a trend.

<IMMI>
IMMI is an apparel brand launched by Chinese designers Joyce and Xiaomin in 2015, and in 2018, the brand collaborated with Studio Unravel to open their first flagship store in Xintiandi, Shanghai.
www.immi-fashion.com

Type: Fashion Flagship Store

Client: IMMI

Location: L218-219 Xintiandi Style, No.245 Madang Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, China
Floor Area: 160㎡
Involvement: Concept Design, Construction Plan, Construction Supervision
Date of completion: Oct. 2018
Photography: Sunghoon, Han