Eyewear is also architecture

The Portuguese architect, Jorge Sousa Santos, has designed an optical store in Beja, Portugal. The interior of the outlet features American hard maple floors and wall panels. Mounted on the walls is a series of revolving round mirrors used to display and support the eyewear.

The store is on three levels to give customers a greater feeling of privacy. The entrance on the first floor includes a display area, sales area and laboratory. The second floor hosts additional display areas for optometry and the offices. The third floor is for staff.

The main aim of the project was to create a feeling of unity in all the internal spaces and a completely new way of displaying eyewear. To achieve this, the display wall in the store is in pale cream American hard maple panels fitted with numerous round mirrors. Reinterpretations of traditional barber’s shop mirrors, they have a support for the eyewear on one side. “This system is an invitation to customers to interact because the base of the eyewear support becomes a mirror simply by rotating it”, Sousa Santos explained. And, in fact, this solution solves one of the major problems in optical stores, where to put mirrors and how to integrate them in the main display space.

The set of round mirrors forms a pattern on two levels, with a play of intersections and empty spaces that creates a feeling of total unity. Harmony is also given by the choice of materials and the way in which certain details are revealed only by the lighting. The maple flooring supports the mirrors and the lacquered surfaces of the cabinets covers the entire space containing the displayed models, but also printed material and stocks. “The lacquered surface is the antithesis of wood because it can create a dense, reflecting mass that incorporates all the elements necessary for the store’s business”, Sousa Santos said.

Machados Lda won the tender for the joinery and carpentry of the walls and floor and used a 120mm x 15mm cross section of American hard maple with a coating of transparent varnish. A concave piece of solid American maple connects the flooring to the walls.
For more technical information and case studies on American hardwood, including maple, go to www.americanhardwood.org.