Ghaith&Jad: Starch

The architect duo designed a flexible system, made of brass and lights, to continuously reconfigure the Starch shop where young Lebanese designers are invited to show their collections.

Starch is a non-profit organization that helps launch Lebanese emerging designers. It is an annual program and a rotation of debut collections where young Lebanese designers are selected each year, the collections are then presented for a period of one year at Starch shop.

Based on the foundation’s ever changing identity of designers, different entities start to invade a designed platform of possibilities. These current settlers seek to live within the space and begin to break from a frozen existence into a multitude of choreographed chapters, keeping the space alive and never dormant.

The boutique features a spatial installation of 27 brass members that slide along each other and hook to 186 wall/ceiling-bound hooks. These members on which the clothes are displayed, float over pedestals on a rough white floor, both made of casted plaster. Brass cubes with hollow circular centers are screwed onto each end of the brass rods. These allow the rods to be latched on the hooks and each other forming an interconnected clothing rail that can be regularly reconfigured.

With these contrasting elements of mass and outline comes a 1.1m mobile spherical light source that moves in the space along the back wall, held by two balancing concrete counterweights. In addition to several rotating light heads that focus more light on the clothes.

All these elements react within the limits of the space and become a family of inhabitants; a family that turns space into place, place into playground, and playground into Starch. Making Starch this year not only a store but also a spatial installation that communicates with this year’s designers, while creating a surreal atmosphere of a million identities. All items – including the lighting fixtures – in the store where designed and manufactured by Ghaith&Jad.