FASCINATION STREET

CREATING CONSUMMATE retail environments can apply as much to the fine details as the larger picture. Homewares specialist Nest and Trelise Cooper Kids were just two retailers to address everything with a fine-tuned design sensibility.

Cape Interior Construction worked on both these fit-outs with some input from an international perspective, says the company's designer Adrian Nancekevill.

"Nest was set over two levels, with two thirds of its retail space on the upper level," he says. "We introduced an escalator at the entrance to encourage upstairs pedestrian flow and strategic lighting to draw shoppers through the crisp, white 1200m² interiors."

The English store's clean profile is retained here in Nuffield Street, but Cape Interiors customised many elements to suit the space's oval shape on both levels, a welcome legacy from its origins as a control room for the power board. Everything from floor displays to dividing walls are movable, ensuring something different catches the customer's eye every time they visit.

"Trelise Cooper Kids was an equally detailed project, with much of it angled to a belly button-high perspective," says Nancekevill. "Derek Lockwood, a globe-travelling retail design eye for Saatchi & Saatchi, provided much of the vision for the fairyland space."

Staying true to Trelise Cooper's signature white space and eclectic furnishings, the space offers clothes racks that hang at children's height, a catwalk with changeable floor-windows to hold anything from roses to jellybeans and a detailed ceiling painting that might have been inspired by Michelangelo.

"The dressing rooms are equally spectacular," says the designer. "One has mirrored walls, a mirrored ceiling and mirrored floor, another total red shag pile, the third drips in lace and the fourth is decked out in velvet a feast for the imagination that is designed to appeal as much to the adults as to the kids."

For details, contact Cape Interiors, 15-17 Shaddock Street, Eden Terrace, Auckland, phone (09) 374 4204, fax (09) 374 4205. Email: dave@capeinteriors.co.nz.

Story by: Trendsideas