Alter Store by 3Gatti Architecture - Naked mannequins sit on the walls and ceiling of a clothes store in Shanghai, inspired by the artist MC Escher. Sonja Long, the owner, had a vision about inverted values, alternative beauties and subverted points of view. This idea sparked 3Gatti to create an alternative clothes store, representing these values across their interiors in a creative and mind - bending way.
Last year, Kancho blogged about D'espresso, a café in New York. This café has a similar mind-bending concept to Alter Store. Nema Workshop created a space which creates the illusion the room has been turned on it's side by fitting the door, ceiling and walls with full size photographs of bookshelves printed on tiles. There's also gravity defying lamps - these make the room appear that it's on its side. The design is directly inspired by the spinning camera scene in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
D'espresso has a lovely designed flash site too. For more photos of D'espresso's crazy interiors take a look here.
This post was written by Kerry Leslie, who is on a work placement at Kancho. Kerry hunted down D'espresso in April whilst on a university trip after seeing it on a number of blogs such as coolhunter. She says it was well worth finding, and recommends to anybody who is visiting New York to go look for it.
