For their first New York store, Italian design studio, Alessi chose Soho and a space a few doors down from Moss. The front half of the space is devoted to a coffee shop with displays of Alessi's wares. In the rear of the store, the housewares are displayed on glass shelves in a brightly lit, white and mirrored space-uit is a little intimidating and very harsh. While the colorful plastic designs pop against the intense whiteness-the many stainless steel and glass designs are lost in all the reflections. The unique (yet, bizarre) space was designed by Hani Rashid of architecture and design firm, Asymptote...
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i believe this store is featured in the cover story of this month's issue of metropolis.
The floor in that place is completely damaged already, and it looks like they run trucks over it at night. Guess a high polished white floor is not a good thing to do. It hasn't even been open that long and already looks trashed.
heyday has passed? that's a little harsh
i visited this store 2 or more weeks ago and felt that the store design was more of a corporate statement and not designed or merchandised for sales. alessi is sold in many stores in new york, and maybe the company feels it just needs a store front in high profile area like soho for public relations and advertising, many other companies do this. as the writer sbove mentioned most products were overwhelmed by the design. Alessi has designs by some of the most well respected industrial designers. i love my castiglioni designed berry bowl, but had to circle the store twice to find it.
I love Alessi as well, but why are there things sitting on the floor like centerpiece bowls and the like? I also feel like I am going to run into a wall or something in there...seems a little "maze like".
Are you sure this is the first US store? There's been one in SF for a bit now.
Geoff—You're right. There is an Alessi store in LA and SF. Interestingly enough, when one is hunting for stores on the Alessi site, the New York store appears at the top of the list no matter what state you look under...I originally thought that it was the only flagship due to this odd method of organization.
The best thing about the store design is the beautiful faceted plasterwork. The pale floor and the lighting design both seem misguided.
The coffee bar up front serves Joes coffee, and they pull an excellent shot (if you're into that sort of thing). Just try and keep your sunglasses on as the combination of the bright bright fluorescent and halogen lighting reflecting off all that duckegg blue and stainless steel can be blinding.
This brings me back. I remember when the Alessi boutique openned at Bloomingdales in the early 90's it seemed so exotic. I dreamed about owning a tea kettle one day, I was a lot younger then and my tastes have changed but I think I'd still like that standing stainless juice reemer thingy (I wonder if I can afford it yet?).