MANITO
INTERIOR DESIGN
Designer: Jingjing Huang
2022
For Manito, we wanted to convey a sense of lightness, beauty, and sensuality.
We have conceived of a pale-toned store with soft edges, rounded corners, and supple drapery that forms a background to delicate silken garments, sleepwear, and intimate attire.
This small delicate store is inserted into a historic building within the Xintiandi complex; a hardened façade of textured brick and roughcast textured concrete.
We wanted to create a focus to this building, an attractor to passers-by, whilst respecting the architecture and acknowledging the sensitivity of the site.
Within the store, walls wrap and guide visitors within, a translucent pink display table anchors the space, whilst light grey plinths line the walls and act as a serving counter.
The small changing room area is a transformer - with a generous space given over to a large soft chair which can be enveloped by a motorized silken drape that can change this space from public to private - giving customers the privilege of a large beautiful changing space. Space to try clothing in privacy. This changing space is a device used principally to save space, within this cosy store.
Each installation is kinetic, gently moving elements in hardened stainless steel, the hard mechanical aesthetic is in stark contrast to the objects that are the focus of their manipulation, single pieces of delicate silk fabric in a bold aquamarine blue. The stainless-steel mechanism is augmented with 3D printed components - designed to manipulate the silk to give the apparent feeling of movement, flow, and contour - silk reacts most beautifully to light in a moving state - our installations serve to create a constant movement to display the beauty of silk.
