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Obumex, the Belgian studio known for handcrafted luxury kitchens as well as complete interiors and renovations has opened its first showroom in Paris. Located at 23 Rue de Lille in the 7th Arrondissement, the showroom joins the company’s other outlets located in Belgium: The head office and showroom in Staden and showrooms in Knokke and Ghent. Obumex also has representatives in New York, Toronto and Vancouver.

The Paris showroom’s kitchen display is a gorgeously sublime study in textures in stone, wood and fabric. Like a perfectly executed bowl of café au lait, it invites contemplation and serenity instead of frantic activity.

It avoids the shiny appliance- and tile-heavy industry of a typical kitchen by hiding as much as possible in the tall fabric-covered closets that have replaced the standard up-and-down rows of cupboards.

Rounded corners balance the stony hardness of the central travertine worktop, and the same rounded shape repeats in the furnishings and the arched doorway. The large dark-brass Tryst Three chandelier by the Zambia-born, New-Delhi-based Paul Matter above the worktop helps tilt the overall feel away from pastelly cuteness toward an art gallery vibe. Matter’s Tango pendant perches above the small seating area.

Obumex was established in 1960 by Eli Ostyn in Belgium. It started with school furniture but quickly moved into kitchens and Eli’s son Geert took over. Today Obumex is a full-service design firm with Geer’s son, Thomas as the CEO leading a 100+ team of employees.

Obumex has remained an independent, family-owned business not associated with any specific brand, which has given the company the freedom to be flexible, and to evolve and innovate. Obumex works with well-known designers and architects including John Pawson who designed the company’s first mass-produced kitchen in 1996. Other collaborators include Joseph Dirand, Vincent Van Duysen and Nicholas Schuybroek. Tuija Seipell

Images by Verne

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More a showroom than a shop, the first location of Zaura jewelry is a fantastic juxtaposition of elements: Bulky rock vs. dainty filigree jewelry. But the Ahmedabad-based Zaura is a brand willing to be more than one thing and to make bold statements about their nature-inspired essence.

The boutique’s interior exudes strength and power bringing into mind an art gallery or a museum. Zaura’s product is delicate jewellery designed by founder Urvi Patel. Her designs, set with pavé diamonds, are inspired by nature and feature detailed filigree forms resembling flowers, crystal formations, leaves and heavenly bodies.

And although one might feel that the robust grey pillars and massive rock formations of the studio-showroom and the dainty jewellery have nothing in common, in the end it is all inspired by and formed deep in the earth by nature be it stone, diamonds, silver, gold or platinum.

The collaboration of Patel and her husband Amrish Patel is the secret behind the stunning store. Amrish Patel is co-founder of Apical Reform, one of India’s most innovative and progressive design studios that creates kinetic, functional and bespoke art. They are known for using plywood in many of their works including our favourite, the curvy Betula chair made of birch plywood and striking a balance between art, ergonomics and functionality.

To complete the design of the space, Apical Reform worked with another Ahmedabad-based firm, the architecture practice R+R Architects, founded by architect Ar. Raghav Patel and interior designer Id Ramesh Lohar in 2016.

The partitions in the Zaura showroom that look as if they were made of rock are in fact constructed from plywood, using complex digital fabrication methods to mimic the results of erosion in nature. And what seems to be aged lime plaster is actually one of the many custom elements made of metal, fiberglass and glass.

As the by-appointment-only guests move through the showroom’s rocky formations, viewing the jewelry in handsome glass bells, they end up in a lounge with a softer seating area where the grey colour palette continues but the upholstered seating, soft carpeting and gauzy drapery create a relaxed, yet professional setting for discussing custom-created jewelry. Tuija Seipell

Photos: Ravi Mistry, The Fishy Project

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The LVMH-owned French beauty brand Officine Universelle Buly has recently opened yet another boutique in Japan. It was designed by the brand’s co-owner and creative director Ramdane Touhami in his design practice Art Recherche Industrie.

The newest Kobe boutique is a free-standing store in the Kobe BAL Annex in the popular Motomachi neighbourhood. The brand has several free-standing and department-store shops in Japan and globally, but this is the first one in Japan that also incorporates a café. The store and café occupy adjacent units on the ground floor of the Annex.

With its deep-green walls, patterned tile floors, dark wood cabinets and the massive black marble bar the interior of the store and café have the luxurious ambiance of a brand with a very long history. Brass, cast iron and an eclectic mix of contemporary hanging light fixtures continue the mood of traditional Japanese brands.

This multitude of characteristics comes naturally in Japan from the long history of many establishments. Combined with the meticulous displays of jars, bottles and other packages, the Officine Universelle Buly interiors speak to the impeccable sense of order also so typical and beautiful in Japan.

Dark-wood display cases reminiscent of stores from a bygone era showcase for example their comb selection that is said to be the largest in the world.

Officine Universelle Buly was founded by Jean-Vincent Bully (yes, his name had two l:s) in 1803 on rue Saint-Honore in Paris. After a fantastic run in the world of fashion and parfumes, the brand petered out. But it was resurrected in 2014 by artistic director and co-owner Ramdane Touhami and his wife, beauty expert Victoire de Taillac. They have family in Japan and they are both avid Japan-fans. They have embraced the Japanese culture and its products. According to de Taillac, their first products were the Rice brand powder for cleansing the face, Camelia oil, and the Minebari Comb.

In addition to Japan, the brand has stores in Paris, Milan, London, Munich, Luxembourg, Bangkok Macao Taipei, Seoul and Hong Kong. According to Touhami, several new stores are expected for example in Vancouver, Jakarta and elsewhere.

Kobe BAL shopping centre consists of two parts, the main building and the BAL Annex. Both offer fashion and lifestyle stores such as the Japanese Tokyo-based brand Muji, the Australia-originated L’Oréal brand Aesop and the New York-based POLO Ralph Lauren.

Motomachi is both a district and a street in Kobe. It is considered the main shopping street in the city as well. It is 1.2 kilometres long and boasts more than 300 stores and many tourist attractions. Tuija Seipell

Images ©Officine Universelle Buly

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We love bakeries. And we especially love bakeries with a true sense of design and style. We have written about bakeries for almost two decades and we continue to look for fresh ideas.

In the Mi Pan Bakery project, we love the candid admission of the designers that they recognized they could not create a design that was too modern, too funky or too different as it might turn people away and intimidate tradition-loving customers who are not used to “designer” bakeries. Yet the designers also wanted to evoke a distinctive feeling of newness and freshness to update the image of the 40-year-old brand.

For four decades, Mi Pan has been a bakery for everyone, for young and old. It was important for the brand to remain an “everyone’s” bakery, to not appear snobbish or pretentious. And as bread is an integral part of many Mexican traditions and celebrations, it was important to continue the open-to-all and part-of-everyone’s-life brand values.

The work was completed by Concentrico, an interdisciplinary collaboration studio of architects and designers, based in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Monterrey, Mexcio. The studio is led by creative director Alejandro Peña Villarreal who was also the head architect of the Mi Pan project. Other key project leads were architects Ana Rebeca Mata and Jose Maria Cuevas and industrial designer May Cisneros.

To understand the project’s connection with the near and distant past of Mexico, the designers at Concentrico not only analyzed the history of the brand but also the visual and practical traditions and customs of Mexican bakeries in general.

As a result, the bakery’s promise “Siempre bueno masa a migaja” – always good from dough to crumb – remains unchanged and it is also highly visible on the back wall of the store. The aprons of the staff carry the message “Prueba el Pan de Verdad” – Try the real bread.

The overall ambiance of the bakery is open and clean, warm and inviting, but it is not cozy or homey. There is a sense of production and large scale with metal trays, rows of shelving and large displays.

There are few visual or physical barriers between the customers and the bakers, and the active production pace of a busy bakery is openly visible to all. At the exit, customers will encounter a display of the traditional celebratory breads, Rosca de Reyes and Pan de Muertos.

“Rosca de Reyes” (kings’ wreath) is a Mexican traditional celebratory bread wreath enjoyed with family and friends on “Dia de Reyes” on January 6^th (Epiphany Day or Kings Day). A small plastic figurine is placed inside the wreath symbolising baby Jesus. The person who finds the figurine is expected to throw a fiesta and serve tamales for everyone on” Dia de la Candelaria” on February 2.

“Pan de Muertos” (bread of the dead) is an essential part of a “Dia de Los Muertos” (celebrated in October or November) home shrine or ofrenda. The bread’s purpose is to nourish the dead who visit the land of the living on that day. Tuija Seipell

Images Jose Miguel Gonzales/Apertura Studio, Juan Pablo Tavela/Jpark Studio

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Although BIBU is promoted as a “pet store” it is really much more. It is an entire pet-care and pet-pampering environment, strategically answering the call of the younger generations to provide the services and products their pampered pets need. In addition to retailing pets, pet supplies and food, BIBU includes also a veterinary clinic and hospital, and facilities for pet boarding, spa, grooming and training.

The designers of the two-level, 630 square-metre (6,781 sq. ft) shop are Guangchou-based One Fine Day Studio & Partners, a (ofD), an architecture and design firm established in 2013.

Lead architect Jump Lee with design team members Chun-jie He and Yong-jie Lao drew inspiration for the upscale project from American filmmaker Stan Kubric’s iconic 1968 sci-fi film 2001:A Space Odyssey.

The façade of the store that is located in the high-end condo building, Gaode Mansion, is a happy and friendly bright blue square that immediately attracts attention. With its rounded openings it resembles a 1950s appliance, perhaps a radio, fridge or TV. It also heralds the retro milieu of the interior.

On the ground floor, right at the entrance, ofD placed a social area, a café called DOPPIO by La Moitié where the Space Odyssey-theme is the most obvious. The white tiled floor, the futuristic furniture pieces placed far from each other, and the overall feel of space, light and whiteness are all part of this retrofuturist impression, the future of the past. The design firm has worked with La Moitié before, so the connection with that brand came naturally.

The second-floor includes the pet hospital and clinic where cleanliness is the main requirement. But even there, in the general whiteness, the Space Odyssey-theme is palpable in the, muted colours, smoky metal and abundance of lighting fixtures.

The two-level space, although divided clearly into sections that separate the various services, is connected by an open atrium that gives the viewpoint from which one can really appreciate yet another aspect of the Space Odyssey theme, the rounded forms of the project.

From the spiralling stairs to partitions, lighting fixtures and windows, everything is rounded. This also includes all corners as there are no sharp angles in BIBU, which of course is also good for the guests, the pampered pets.

The overall colour scheme is muted white with forest green and robin’s-egg blue as accents and with white tiles and dark wooden panels covering the floors.

The Gaode Mansion is located in the core area of Guangzhou, next to the K11 Art Mall and the International Financial Centre. Tuija Seipell

Images by yuuuunstudio

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With smart design, basic local craft skills and a flexible experimental attitude, even the most ordinary warehouse-like space can become an appealing selling environment.

This was recently proven in the Yuntai Ice Chrysanthemum Industry Park in Houyanmen Village in Huanfeng Town, where Beijing-based LUO Studio www.luostudio.cn transformed a hurriedly built steel-frame warehouse into a locally relevant, charming  display space by creating a delicate-looking wooden sub-structure inside the bland hall.

The purpose of this specific building is to function as a display area and showroom for the region’s famous Ice Chrysanthemum products that have a multitude of medicinal and cosmetic uses. The selling channels of these products from this space include hosted tour groups, franchisee marketing and livestreaming. It was also becoming clear that because of social media and online channels, the physical selling and display environment have become crucially important.

In addition, the pandemic has interrupted the influx of tour groups and the ice chrysanthemum plantations in the village have suffered severe production decrease because of recent floods. All this required the space not only to help boost sales but also do it with minimum costs.

Designers and construction instructors Luo Yujie, Wang Beilei, Huang Shangwan, Zhang Chen of LUO Studio worked with local people to create the 602 square-metre (6,480 sq.ft) exhibition space with all this in mind. Local affordable materials, and uncomplicated techniques that did not require special equipment or specialised skills, were the answer. LUO Studio chose thin wooden panels with a high lumber recovery rate manufactured by a local timber factory as main construction material. The panels can be assembled by hand and easily relocated and reused.

Onsite experimentation helped the designers and local workers to arrive at the best solutions especially in terms of bending the wood to an optimal, safe shape. The result is a delicate and organic-looking display area that is thoroughly local, and cleverly disguises the unseemly industrial hall.

Luo Yujie, founder of LUO Studio, is known for his creative and bold design solutions using reclaimed materials, especially wood. His award-winning project include the Longfu Life Experience Center and the Luontuwan Pergola. He often strives to counter the quick-and-cheap construction characteristics of governmental bodies with the smart use of local materials and craft skills, and with the reuse and recyclability of materials.

Yuntai Mountain is located in the Yuntai Geo Park, a popular tourist attraction with its impressive rugged nature including Yuntai Waterfall which at 314 metres (1,030 ft) said to be the tallest in China. Tuija Seipell

Images: Weiqi Jin

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We support the liberation of bread and all baked goods from all unsightly plastic bags and from humiliatingly poor ingredients. Bread is important, essential and incredibly good and good for you when taken seriously. This does not mean complicated or gimmicky. In fact, the best breads, cookies and pastries are the ancient basics, traditional recipes lovingly passed on and sometimes improved by each generation. These gorgeous traditional breads deserve to be created, sold and enjoyed in beautiful surroundings.

Our love of bread and bakeries where tradition and modern life coexist has resulted in a series of articles we headlined The Rise of the Designer Bakery. It continues to be one of our most popular and most-copied article series ever. And we are glad to add another little establishment to this series of bakeries: Dorbolò La Gubana Boutique in Cividale de Friuli, in Udine, Italy.

Dorbolò La Gubana Boutique is a bakery and café designed by Giorgio di Bernardo, CEO and founder of Udine-based Visual Display S.r.l. We have featured di Bernardo’s work before, including the Restoration of Vitello d’Oro, The City’s Oldest Restaurant, a secret pop-up bar, Mr. Simon, both also located in Udine in Northeastern Italy.

Gubana is a typical Friulian dessert of the Valli del Natisone area traditionally prepared at home for great occasions. It is said to date back to 1,400 years ago and brought to this region by the people of ancient Slavic origin.

The Dorbolo family has a long tradition of baking this local dessert that is both a pastry and a cake made of sweet, leavened dough and filled with layers of dried fruit and nuts. The owners of the new bakery café, Jessica and Joelle Dorbolo, have inherited the recipe from their grandmother Antonia.

In addition to gubana, the shop sells other cakes and pastries and traditional breads. Its interior is minimalist in all other aspects except in the ceiling that has an arched substructure that could be said to resemble the layers of a gubana when it is cut into slices. The designer tells us that the shop is envisioned to be a small stage with its various sets up in the wings. The majority of the space is dedicated to the marble display cases, but in the background, there are small round tables with intriguing L-shaped brass legs that bolt into the wall-mounted seating.

The overall effect is that of a light and happy yet decidedly elegant cake box or container that just happens to have breathtaking views of the historic city center of Cividale del Friuli.  Tuija Seipell

Images Camilla Bach – Styling Sara Bertolini

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When Vic and Anthony Puharich opened their first retail butcher shop, Victor Churchill, on Queen Street in Sydney’s Woollahra neighbourhood 10 years ago, we knew they were on to something unusual. We wrote about them then with enthusiasm and although it was the father-and-son duo’s first retail endeavour, it was obvious to us they were in it for real.

Every detail in the Sydney boutique was thought through from the tiniest aspect of the interior to the super-exclusive selection of products, and to the elegant, attentive service. This was sheer retail theatre but without the fake over-reaching theatrics so prevalent in retail then and even more so today. This was traditional, old-school retail, yet it completely fit in the contemporary context and met the surprised clientele’s needs and desires they didn’t even know they had. It was the surprise of it all that made it so magical.

And now, when they have opened their second exclusive retail environment on High Street in Melbourne’s Armadale, we are equally excited. The same values and enchantment are present here, yet this is not a cookie-cut copy of the Sydney boutique. This is its own environment with new ideas baked into the same traditional values and approach.

The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain also became enamored with the Sydney shop, calling it “the most beautiful butcher shop in the world” during one of his episodes filmed there. The Puharichs were dreaming of opening another store in one of the great cities in the world, so there was a synergy there. “Actually, we had plans to do a shop with Bourdain in New York, but that of course did not happen, sadly,” Anthony Puharich tells The Cool Hunter.

“Instead, we decided to open in Melbourne with the same values and principles we’ve established in our Sydney store.” The physical Melbourne store space carries with it some impressive history as well, although this is not a historic butcher shop like the Victor Churchill premises in Sydney. The Melbourne shop is located in the Heritage-listed site of the oldest State Savings bank of Victoria.

Designer Rod Faucheux of Surry Hills, Sydney-based loopcreative has taken the owners’ philosophy and the traditions and experiences of the Sydney shop and translated it all into a unique, new experience. It carries many of the hallmark features of the first shop including the Himalayan salt bricks in the curing rooms, the centrally located solid-wood butcher blocks, and the marble flooring.

Dramatic lighting, dark hues, and curving forms are also present in both stores. In the Melbourne shop, the attention to detail is impressive and includes the sausage-shaped door handles and an original, fully restored Berkel slicer from the 1930s that is in constant use, evoking the traditions and history of the profession of butchery.

What we love about this company is the fact that this is their second store. It would have been more typical and very tempting to start cloning the surprising success of the first store as soon as possible and in doing so, change the company’s nature to something that the owners clearly are not interested in. We love that. Knowing who you are, knowing what you love and what you stand for.

We also love it that the Melbourne store is a full-body experience. Not a single screen in sight. This shop has that same captivating, entrancing theatrical feel as the Sydney shop, but no-one entering the store would think of “retail theatre” here either.

Instead, the guests are inhaling the scents, admiring the displays, watching the demonstrations, tasting the samples, chatting with each other and with the team members. They are participating, engaging and enjoying.

Anthony Puharich is a fourth-generation butcher and the family’s meat distribution company, Vic’s Premium Quality Meat, established in 1996, has become Australia’s leading distributor of high-quality meat. The Pucharichs come to the meat business with high credentials.

But what has been so delightful is their retail success in a category that has not been seen as sexy or interesting. So when their Sydney store opened, it drew a lot of attention including winning prestigious retail design prizes in competitions where butcher shops had never even participated before let alone won.

We believe that when you do something well and actually do it for real, not just to draw attention or make money, you stand out. People can tell the difference. Even in today’s crazy competitive retail world. Perhaps especially in today’s crazy retail world. Tuija Seipell 

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Blue Bottle Coffee the American chain established by musician James Freeman in California in 2002, has opened its first permanent store in Osaka, Japan. Now owned by the global consumer-brand giant Nestle, the chain opened its first three Japanese stores in 2015 in Tokyo and it now has about 20 stores in total in Japan. In Osaka, before opening this permanent store, Blue Bottle had a quick month-long pop-up of cold beverages at the Daimaru Osaka/Umeda department store in July this year.

The Osaka café is located on the first and ground floors of a new concrete-and-glass building in the Chayamachi district. The area is known as having a historically rich cultural mix of arts, theaters and broadcasting stations, and it also includes office towers and other commercial facilities.

The café was designed by Tokyo-based Studio I IN www.i-in.jp, who founded the studio in 2018, has created a minimalist fusion of many influences in the 345-square-metre (3,713 sq.ft) Osaka café. The strong Japanese tea culture of the area, the minimalist, blue-glass-bottle dominated graphic language of the brand, and the desire to separate the two levels of the café, each with its own vibe – all of this influenced the clean, almost sterile feel of the café where the main materials are glass, stainless steel and concrete.

The first level is open and spacious with wood and stainless steel dominating the otherwise sparse space that also has the obvious Blue Bottle brand accents of blue glass. The second level is infused with a digital overlay created by Tokyo-based Panoramatiks. According to the designers, customers sitting in this upper-level area will encounter a “sensory experience where music and images ’fall’ from the ceiling.”

Blue Bottle cafes all sport the minimalist blue bottle logo. According to the company website, the name stems from a historic tale that involves coffee beans and heroics, and led to the establishment of the first-ever central-European coffee-house in Vienna called Blue Bottle. This tale does not divulge why the café was so called but that is how the American chain, some 300-plus years later was named Blue Bottle.

In all, Blue Bottle Coffee has about 100 cafes in major US and Japanese cities plus a couple in Seoul and Hong Kong. Like all companies following consumer trends, Blue Bottle Café has announced its commitment to sustainability. Blue Bottle commits to carbon neutrality by 2024 according to Karl Strovnik, CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, quoted on Nestle’s website last month. Tuija Seipell

Photography Tomoki Kengaku

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