A concept store in Vancouver shows its historical layers

Leisure Centre is a concept store in Vancouver designed by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects. The store is a multi-brand avant-garde fashion store incorporating a bookshop, café, lifestyle and health products, as well as private shopping areas. The existing art deco building has a visually dominant structural grid and a beautiful concrete floor, which has the history of previous occupants inscribed into its layered and worn surface like a palimpsest. Services ducts are exposed and follow the structural grid, emphasising a strong directionality.

The design retains much of the as-found features of the space, while introducing distinctly new materials and geometries. A new wall system made from aluminium clad L-shaped elements is rotated at 45 degrees against the existing building grid forming pochets of space to be populated by different product groups, as well as a central place. The spatial interventions are complimented with bespoke display vitrines, glass and aluminium counters, steel hanging rails and shelves, which were custom designed specifically for the project, and fabricated by local craftsmen.