Opening of the Apple Brompton Road store in London
Opening of the Apple Brompton Road store in London,
British company Foster + Partners has opened a new Apple store in London with green spaces and an undulating wooden roof.
The new Knightsbridge store, dubbed Apple Brompton Road, is located between Harrods and Harvey Nichols department stores.
The store is flooded with natural light from the floor-to-ceiling arched windows.
Apple Brompton Road is a quiet oasis in a bustling and vibrant part of London.
Customers interact with Apple’s impressive suite of products and experience personalized customer service in a unique environment that includes both historical and natural elements.
The warehouse is a single storey square footprint,
and the 7-meter-high volume includes an undulating wooden ceiling,
It has 4-meter wide arched windows from floor to ceiling and is surrounded by eight graceful Ficus trees.
Design features
Inside, the trees nod to London’s famous Hyde Park, which is only a few steps away on Brompton Road.
Tree-lined benches at the base of each planter become a visual feature as well as a social gathering space or resting area for visitors.
This blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors while bringing nature directly into the building.
The natural light becomes muted in appearance as it filters through the leaves and dances on the interior surfaces of the shop.
The store features a curved wooden ceiling that reflects the current geometry of the building’s historic façade.
The integrated ceiling fixtures blend seamlessly with the wood paneling, having been designed to match its color and finish.
The studio aimed to create a warm material and the materials were carefully chosen to create a calm and cohesive environment for visitors and staff.
On the other hand, stone, wood and terrazzo complement the building’s exterior façade made up of bath stone and red brick.
People enter the store through central arcades,
mirroring the proportions of the original Brompton Arcade, which was built on this exact location in 1903.
The central spine is defined by castagna stone columns and four ficus trees also at their bases.
At the end of the tree-lined walkways, the studio designed the Forum – another focal point in the design that serves as a separate learning and event space – with a large video wall.
The screen seems to pop up effortlessly with the sound equipment discreetly built into the stone walls.
The forum volumes are amplified by a reflective ceiling made of specialized tension fabric, generating an uninterrupted reflective plane.
An Apple Pickup area, to collect online orders, is adjacent to Avenue on the left.
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