Neil M Denari’s first built work in his hometown of Los Angeles, California, is a showroom for LA Eyeworks, a retailer that specializes in cutting-edge eyewear. For this store, the client wanted a showroom that could successfully accommodate ever-changing trends while providing the retailer with a fixed spatial identity. The relationship between the conventions of commercial retail space and the stability of architecture usually associated with institutional work, and the LA Eyeworks Showroom deals with the contrast between the permanence of architecture and the seasonal collections of fashionable glasses.

So, although fashion is by definition based on quick stylistic shifts, the clients specified that the architecture itself would not be changed while they occupied the building. Neil M Denari thus had to resist the fashion of architecture without resorting to a lack of expression. The renovation of this existing two-story building still keeps the upper, curved portion of the facade which wraps the corner between Martel and the main entry of Beverly Boulevard. In working with the basic parameters of store design such as the demand for transparency from the street and from the sales counter, the design shapes space and movement through a continuous suspended surface.

The gaseous blue surface performs many functions including perforated ceiling plane, window display, bench, shelving unit and sales counter. In between the anchored space and the products on sale, a group of specially-designed furniture elements on wheels, designed by the architects, acts as a mediator of scale and movement and mediates the scale and is fitted with casters for easy rearrangement. A wall of vacuum-formed panels installation designed by the artist Jim Iserman fills the entire west wall of the store. According to the architect, the piece acts as a thick 2D vertical surface where the repetitive pattern of the panels is graphic field against which the rest of the space may be perceived. By merging the brief’s functional needs with the exploration of sculptural continuity, architecture and eyeglasses fuse in a coordinated design.

Famous in LA for their frame brands, Gai Gherardi and Barbara McReynolds gave Neil M Denari the chance to design a total environment that reflected the LA Eyeworks’s product and process. As the architect says, “the architecture is built, the art is installed, the glasses are designed, then produced…work[ing] together to create a smooth environment.” It took 10 months to establish the showroom, with a budget of USD 300,000 including the furniture. This incredible project was completed in June 2002 and won an American Institute of Architecture (AIA) Honor Award for Interiors in 2005.

[Show as slideshow]