Gallery of Furniture – Building that transcend their intended purpose
Architectural studio Chybík + Krištof was featured in an article by Nick Mafi where describes 3 buildings that transcend their intended purpose and how he believes: “They can teach us more about the subtleties involved in creating sublime architecture for this century, while carrying it into the next.”
Furniture showrooms are rarely remembered for what the exterior of the building looks like, but for the products within. That surely is not the case for this building designed by the young architects at Chybík + Krištof. Founded in 2010, this Prague-based firm is starting to turn heads, and with designs such as the Gallery of Furniture, it’s easy to see why. To create such a memorable design, the architects outfitted the exterior of the building with 900 plastic chairs, all of them uniform in shape and color. “The inspiration for the design came from the need to find an economically efficient solution to the problem of offering a new face to a furniture showroom,” says Ondřej Chybík, one of the two founding architects. “We eventually realized that the most accessible design was right there all along: the client’s chair, multiplied over the entire façade, protecting the space from the natural elements.”
A closer view of the 900 plastic chairs that make up the exterior of the building.
The Gallery of Furniture does what all great architecture must: making the difficult appear effortless. But in the case of this building, the architects also needed to promote the service within the space. “We needed a façade that could be a banner of sorts,” says Michal Krištof, the second founding architect of the firm. “What we needed was a way to speak of the content within the showroom, but in a less intrusive manner.”
The interior of showroom.
Chybík + Krištof
We are an architecture and urban design practice founded in 2010 by Ondřej Chybík and Michal Krištof. Operating with 50+ international team members from our offices in Prague, Brno and Bratislava; the practice aims to bridge the gap between private and public space while transcending both generational and societal spheres. Taking into account local histories and environmental specificities, the studio works in the fields of architecture, urbanism, research, education and on a wide array of projects, ranging from urban development to public and private buildings.
Source: Architecturaldigest.com
Author: Nick Mafi
Photo: Lukas Pelech