Scenes From Rome's Cityscape

Toronto designer Johnson Chou inspired by classical forms in Woodbridge retail project

Toronto designer Johnson Chou is known for his modern minimalist retail interiors for Toronto stores such as TNT, but a recent project by Chou reveals an approach grounded in more classical architectural forms.
Clothing retailers Doriano Di Carlo and Fabio Sardellitti were teaming up to open their own higher-end menswear shop in Woodbridge. Impressed by Chou's design work, the young retailers wanted him to design their new store, named Grafic. "We loved (Chou's) ideas right from the beginning," says Sardellitti, who along with his business partner wanted to create a store with an urban feel. The co-owners liked the modern sensibility behind TNT's interior designs, but they also felt a warmer palette would be necessary to complement the comfortable service-oriented shopping experience they planned at Grafic. An eight-month store design process between designer and retailer had begun.
Located in the newly opened Weston Downs Shopping Village, the modern interior of Grafic is evident as one approaches the shop's entirely glass frontage. Chou created a stainless steel-clad "tube" at the front of the shop which houses a cylindrical cash desk and provides a viewing frame for the 1,500 square foot space. The first design element seen beyond the stainless steel frame is a monumental store-length walnut-stained wood display and storage wall which almost touches the shop's 14-foot ceiling. The wall's off-centre siting divides the shop into one very open area and another more intimate area reserved for the owners' collections of exclusive labels.
The dark wood of the display and storage wall warms the main space and the effect is repeated in the back lounge, where a black Le Corbusier couch sits on a raised mahogany floor. The low ceiling of the lounge creates an intimate space, a contrast to an initial impression of spaciousness within the shop. The lounge is intended to evoke the comfort of an old world-style men's club. The interplay of compressed and open spaces is even evident within the lounge. Adjacent fitting rooms are enclosed with chromogenic glass and when the fitting room doors are closed, the glass is opaque and can double as a film and video screen. When the doors are open, however, the glass becomes clear and expands the space visually. Subdued shades of red and blue add more warmth to the shop.
While this is what you see at Grafic, open since September, Chou was also concerned with figurative aspects of the store's design. In conversation with Tandem, the designer recalled his student days in Rome and how the city's streets are dominated by the walls of buildings. The display and storage wall at Grafic is an allusion to the ancient city's building typology. "All of my work really has a lot to do with creating a narrative through movement through space," Chou says. His next projects include a restaurant in San Diego modeled on his design for Toronto restaurant Blowfish and a new design for Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, a collaboration with Bortolotto Design.
Chou notes that Hadrian's Villa has always been an influence in his work and "that surfaced in (the Grafic) project". While the display and storage wall can be read as a subtle suggestion of the streets of Rome, the other key design elements within the store's space, including the aperture or proscenium-like stainless steel "tube," the cylindrical cash desk and the lounge, reflect also for Chou the classical Italian architectural practice of placing buildings and objects within open urban spaces, like a fountain in a piazza.
A Toronto area menswear shop wouldn't seem to be the first place to go to for a hint of Rome, but Johnson Chou has made it so.

Publication Date: 2004-11-14
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4602