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Whiteout



WHITEOUT is a ski shop located at the foot of the Chongli Mountain.  The town is known for hosting the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.  The store is one of the many amenities serving the Aranya Shixuechuan Ski resort as well as the first ski-in/ski-out Marriot Hotel in China.  As a boutique store, WHITEOUT features snowboards, snowsuits, as well as accessories from a collection of European and Asian indie brands.


The brand name WHITEOUT refers to “milky weather”.  During which the snow falls so heavily that only a dim outline of objects can be seen, and the distance between the viewers and the objects become rather undistinguishable.  Intrigued by what whiteout does to human sight, we decided to recreate the visual blurriness through introducing a series of showcases with translucent backboards.  The idea is that even when the shelves are fully packed, the store will seem tidy and uncluttered.  And with light and air moving freely, the store would seem open and unenclosed. 


Through making a 45-degree-rotation along the axis of the column grids, we create a floor plan with two sets of grids for the trapezoid-shaped ski shop.  The diagonally placed grid serves primary function with all the showcases and a cashier counter, whereas the column grid serves auxiliary function with a fitting room and a storage room.  Where the two grids intersect, a sense of momentum emerges.  Moreover, the showcases are arranged from the highest to the lowest in a Z-shaped-pattern.  When customers move down the aisles, it recalls the movement of a skier zig-zagging down a mountain.  


All the showcases come in three different heights and widths.  For example, the showcases for accessories such as snow goggles and helmets are wide yet short, the showcases for snowboards are medium in height and width, the showcases for snowsuits are up to 1.8 meters in height.  The shortest showcases are placed to the front of the store, and the tallest to the back.  When customers arrive at the storefront, they are able to see the entire store in an unobstructed view.  Notice that by showing only the silhouette of the merchandises through the translucent backboards, the store gets to keep a clean and minimalistic look while the fogginess and indistinctness gently evokes people’s curiosity to find out more about the garments and gears.  

We take our inspiration of the showcases from sleds and snowmobiles.  Taken after the shape of blades on snowmobiles, the stainless-steel feet of the shelves give the otherwise bulky-looking showcases a sense of mobility and agility, as if they are sliding.  With help from CNC machine, we create patterns on the showcases which serve aesthetic and function at the same time.  For the cabinet part, plywood cutouts are constructed as side boards as well as back boards in the form of trusses, the organic appearance echoes with the blade-looking feet.  
As for the backboard, we convert frosted acrylic boards into custom-made pegboards with slots in the shape of snowflakes.   Within each snowflake, the bigger slots 15-mm-in-diameter can hold shelves for the placement of accessories, while the smaller ones can be combined with hooks to hang up clothes and backpacks.  Thanks to the orthogonal shape of the snowflake patterns, our pegboards manage to combine the functionality and flexibility of a modular system with a fun twist of implying the nature of the merchandise behind the mist of the translucent acrylic board.

Project Location: Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province

Project Type: Commercial/Retail

Building Area: 120 square meters

Interior (Architectural) Design: Aoshu Architecture

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