area 113 | benedetta tagliabue embt

architect: Benedetta Tagliabue embt (Miralles Tagliabue EMBT)

location: Sevilla, Spain

year: 2009

When we were asked to designed a store we started to dream… Camper has much to do with “el campo”, that is the countryside, the fields… to walk in the fields… and so we imagined shoes stepping on irregular surfaces, like when we walk on earth. Camper has gotten us used to play, smile, see fashion with children’s eyes… we imagined trying on shoes in front of the twisted mirrors of an amusement park… here I am tall tall… here short short… and that’s how wobbly reflecting surfaces appeared in the project.
Later, we visited Camper´s factory to see how shoes are made. There we understood we wanted to build our new store the same way Camper shoes are built in Mallorca: flat leather sheets are cut and, like magic, with a couple of stitches and a mould, they become beautiful tridimensional wrappings!! We cut different shoe forms, with hills, without hills, tall, short, for men, for women…we put those flat profiles one next to the other… and that is how our the volume of our new Camper store appeared!! Its construction was unusual, but very simple... (I love thinking how much fun the guys who assembled it must have had!) MDF sheets cut like shoes, fixed one next to each other transform into benches, tables, surfaces and lots of crazy mirrors – where children will spend their time while their moms devote time to the art of shopping.