Brick by Brick

Inclusion/exclusion, enclosure/open-ness, gallery/showroom… Renesa Architecture Design Interiors deftly juggles with contrarian concepts while taking the indigenous, deconstructed route to retail design for Rustickona in Amritsar.

Rupali Sebastian

Architect van der Rohe has famously stated, “Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.” Everything, he has also said, depends on how a material is used, and not on the material itself. These two masterful statements converge at home decor store Rustickona, designed by New Delhi-based Renesa Architecture Design Interiors.

The name started it all. A concatenation of rustic and kona (corner in Hindi), the moniker pointed to the nature of products retailed at the store, “… mostly influenced by a mix of old and new design order,” reveals architect Sanchit Arora, Studio Head, Renesa Architecture Design Interiors. Spurred by the Make in India spirit, the space designers looked towards local materials that could be harnessed for this exercise. These explorations were also buttressed by the clients’ desire for “a fresh scheme to be executed in a very modern way to grab the attention of the Amritsar retail market,” says Sanchit. “The idea was to take the market by storm by creating a simple yet design-centric space that would give a new definition to the concept of a retail showroom.”

This ‘newness’ was manifested by stepping away from the conventional idea and programming of a retail space. “We sought to contextualise the space as a gallery that provides the consumer with an experience of viewing the products by presenting them in an engaging setting,” the architect tells us. “The design allows the customers to interact with the products through the various pockets created, and get a sense of their inherent quality. The final concept removes and cuts through the entire space creating a manoeuvring pattern across the store. Simple curves and diagonals are interspersed to create receptacles of display. These different shapes forming the spatial ideology, dissect and resurrect the design forming a frame for the products,” he states further, adding that the clients were quite receptive to their approach and design process. “From the beginning, the clients were expecting something new and innovative which incorporated their products in the most suitable and economical manner,” explains Sanchit. “Once the 3D was conceptualised, the overall design was maintained, barring a few changes in terms of layout and product display.