With a new showroom in Bangalore, India by Gensler, Studio19 is taking its brand and reach to another level, providing the ideal landscape for clients to touch, try and buy its products.

As a renowned and respected business in the realm of commercial office interiors in India, Studio19 has collections on the showroom floor from around the globe. These range from modular furniture, chairs, soft seating, café furniture, phone booths through to acoustic products.

With its new flagship store in Bangalore, there is now the opportunity to better interact with customers and provide the optimum environment for architects and designers to specify and purchase the very best products for their projects.

As lead on the project, Design Director Gensler, Subhashish Mandal and his team comprising Rayana Raj, Riddhima Rajgopal, Aditya Goel, Seenivasan Lakshmanan and Principal Shravan Bendapudi, have conceived an experience centre that pushes the boundaries of retail design and creates the ideal environment for customer connection.

“Furniture Design Stores should be destinations for people. They have the potential to become opportunities for global brands to not only show their visions but excite storytelling from visitors to explore storyboards of visual expressions and styles. Stores need to be also studios and gallery spaces.” comments Mandal.

The project is driven by three core objectives to meet the brief that includes, firstly showcasing multiple furniture brands effectively, ensuring each had its distinct showcase without competing visually. Secondly, a design that is versatile with a workshop space where visiting designers and clients could collaborate with Studio 19, experimenting with fabrics, colours, and styles to foster creativity and innovation. And lastly, that the space should be able to transform into an event venue for dinners, cricket match screenings and informal gatherings that would support meaningful interactions in a relaxed setting.

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To achieve these objectives across the 650-square-metre (7000-square-feet) floor plan, there are myriad furniture groupings, areas in which to relax and to host community events as well as places for architects and designers to work. The multifunctional showroom can be a place for one or a crowd and the world class furniture brands become much like art pieces displayed in a gallery.

Rather than creating standalone single furniture vignettes, the sophisticated collections are showcased together on plinths and as settings, as a pair or a group and in category, such as the chair wall, highlighting design solutions and displaying the versatility of products. By presenting the different brands and how they can harmoniously combine, the customer experience is elevated and an understanding of the breadth of collections is enhanced.

The experiential was paramount to the success of the project, and this was achieved by designing two pathways through and around the store – a meandering route for exploration and a direct path for efficiency. Unlike conventional linear pathways, a continuous loop was conceived which ensures exposure of all brands of furniture displays. At the heart of the space is The Design Workshop, where interaction between customers and products can be facilitated with ease.

Gensler has thought of everything in the spatial planning of this retail project. There are real interpretations of office design, breakout spaces and every conceivable workplace context. Brands have space and room to breathe, while groupings anticipate design assimilation and provide new ideas.

It’s a new dawn for Studio 19 and Bangalore and is the way of the future for retailing. It’s simply not enough to supply the best products these days, there needs to be opportunities to interact, touch and sit in a place that is dedicated to how a workspace can and should be designed.

Gensler is taking Studio 19 and its customers on an incredible journey of discovery and enjoyment, where the architect and designer have a wonderland of workplace products to explore. Now there is the ability to see a multitude of design curated from every angle and the ultimate winner is the project and client.

Gensler
gensler.com

Photography
Esha Daftari

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