There is a new beauty in Los Angeles that deserves to be ‘wooowed’ once more! The AD100 top architect David Adjaye decided to go bold, designing a pink-tinted concrete store for fashion retailer The Webster. Let’s check out this candy, unwrapped at the beginning of 2020.
Although The Webster is his first project in California, David Adjaye can be called a Royalty in the Architecture world. In 2020 he was awarded a prestigious Royal Gold RIBA, which is the most important architecture award which a British architect can get for his works. The Royal Gold Medal RIBA is therefore an extremely valuable laurel, thanks to which the architect is forever among the most important designers of his time.
The prize, which the Queen personally approves, has been awarded to an architect who has been active on the British architectural scene for a quarter of a century, the author of important, significant but above all distinctive buildings, original, but whose innovation has always been motivated and made sense.
After receiving the award, Adjaye is not settling on its laurels and honours the world of architecture once again, this time with the innovative project The Webster in Los Angeles. The 1,022 square-metre store is covered in pink-tinted concrete, both the exterior and interior.
The building stands out not only because of its intriguing color, but also due to its alluring curved walls, striking geometry, cylindrical pillars and terrazzo floors. This top architect wanted to contrast the exterior of the brutalist-style building above.
“In the past five years I’ve started to work with a lot of saturated red and pink hues, which extends back to the early colour experiments I did at the beginning of my career. Pink felt like fashion, but I wanted to make something that was tough and gentle at the same time” – says David in the interview for Dezeen Magazine.
The front of the building is curved to mirror the front of the existing shop above. It featured an LED screen that is meant to display artworks and play the role of a public forum for passersby, which is the entire point of The Webster. The idea of the shop is to create a community and not only sell and make profit.
Laure Heriard Dubreuil, the founder of the Webster, in the interview for Vogue comments: “The building is serene and warm. That’s what we want even though it sits on one of the busiest intersections in L.A. We want visitors to be transported somewhere they can relax, contemplate, meditate, and enjoy in a peaceful way”.
Her thought attracted Adjaye; “ I think the most interesting retail spaces right now are those that are acting as social centers that people remember and want to go back to. “The store will, of course, have this amazing collection of objects and clothes, but also there’s a hope that it will become a place for people to gather. The most beautiful part of the store, the entrance, has been given over to the public.” – says the top architect in Vogue.
Inside, Adjaye has created a series of alcoves that are fitted with lights, so they would act like big screens for artworks display. The interior continues the pink aesthetic of the exterior, with curved walls and concrete columns. The pink is complimented by terrazzo grey floors with fragments of black cherry marble.
