Ready for the stage

Ready for the stage

VIENNA (AT) - Few people are as good at transforming a space into a stage as the Viennese architect Denis Košutić. He seems able to draw on an inexhaustible supply of surfaces, furniture and objects to keep creating new and unimagined combinations of materials, styles and colours. The new Amicis Fashion Concept Store in downtown Vienna is an ideal place for immersing oneself in Denis Košutić's spatial worlds. It is a corner site with big windows facing the street. The large empty interior seems to have been left unfinished, although this, too, was probably meticulously planned. Positioned in this space are free-standing plasterboard boxes. Inside, each box depicts its own particular world: Flower Power, Neo-Baroque, James Bond or Boudoir. These spatial worlds are self-contained and do not relate to one another since the visual links between them are always cut off by similarly freestanding mirror boxes.

Access to the retail premises is on the corner, beneath a chandelier of light bulbs suspended from countless black cables. On the left is the Neo-Baroque space, all in black and white. It has a black-and-white striped couch and walls decorated with wallpaper featuring a pair of lovers. Beyond a few mirror boxes is the Flower Power corner, its wall cupboards and display table covered with floral printed fabric. Flowers also appear on the lampshades and carpets. To the right of the entrance is a gentleman's room where you can imagine yourself the leading man in a James Bond film. Everything is panelled with cherry wood; between the sofa and the easy chair lies a fox-fur rug. Between this box and the Boudoir, which could be interpreted as a lady's bedroom or dressing room, are more mirror boxes. Everything in the Boudoir is covered in a pink velvet that is a particularly effective backdrop for the sparkling shoes on display here. If the Amicis Fashion Concept Store has put you in the mood for stagecraft, you can continue on to Amicis Men or the Orlando di Castello Restaurant and experience yet more of the Viennese designer's theatrical spaces. (Anne Isopp)