Warmly Crafted – bassike Armadale by Akin Atelier

It’s not often that a retail experience feels familiar and overtly welcoming. bassike Armadale aims to change the traditional approach to a typology that tends towards the theatrical and unapproachable, with Akin Atelier expressing a warm, light-filled, and Japanese-inspired philosophy throughout the space.

The store sits among a collective of high-end boutiques along High Street Armadale in Melbourne. This strip represents the traditional high street as a shopping destination, with clear brand presences in place, all with their own unique personalities for customers to experience. In this context, ensuring the ethos of the brand is represented in its entirety is crucial to creating an experience that extends beyond the merely functional. In proposing the space for bassike, Akin Atelier references a residential influence, guiding the experience internally through subtle and familiar gestures.

Emphasising the original connections to natural light, openings and glass elements are left expressed, while ensuring everything introduced allows for a continued visibility.

To its advantage, the space covers a generous 170 square metres, allowing the often cramped and at times rushed retail experience to be softened through the luxury of additional floor space. Originally built in the 1970s, the outer shell of the building that the store sits within provides a basepoint of timber elements, mesh-wire safety glass, brickwork, and aggregate flooring for the new design to be inserted into. Wanting to retain these features as a connection to both the surrounding context and the history of the architecture, a series of partitions, displays and other points of interaction are positioned with modesty and restraint.

Known for a minimalist approach to fashion, the bassike brand is synonymous with a classic and enduring sense of calm, so creating a retail home that reflected this sensibility was key. Imbuing a warm impression with a residential reference throughout, timber is used for its texture and softness to break up the vastness of the space. Screens that express a Japanese aesthetic create privacy between zones, while also delineating movement between display, changing, and purchasing areas. By continuing this design language through the entire store, each area feels connected.

Known for a minimalist approach to fashion, the bassike brand is synonymous with a classic and enduring sense of calm, so creating a retail home that reflected this sensibility was key.

Emphasising the original connections to natural light, openings and glass elements are left expressed, while ensuring everything introduced allows for a continued visibility. In the centre of the store, skylights bring natural illumination from above deep down into the space. The central double-height space then becomes an expression of light as a focus.

Combining iconic pieces from Australian furniture design brands, bassike Armadale is a celebration of local design. With subtleness and control, Akin Atelier has created a considered space that feels like it could equally be a luxury residence or hotel.