Maurice Villency Flagship Store

The Maurice Villency flagship store is not just a retail space. It is an urban sculpture.

The luxury designer of high-end furniture and home accessories sought out a luxurious architectural design for its 57th Street location. The store's façade of translucent and transparent glass creates a collage for the visitor and passersby on 57th or Third Avenue. The project cost $4 million.

The primarily translucent storefront blocks the view of the interior selling floor behind it. Varying windows of clear glass punctuate the frosted glass and create frames for smaller displays of furniture.

The transparent glass windows, backlit from within the store, are different sizes and set at different heights, a reaction to the current retail strategy of using large picture windows to display product. Within these frames, the furniture draws more focused attention from the viewer without prioritizing one display over another and allows Maurice Villency to show its stock more like a gallery than a selling floor.

In all, the translucent-lit glass creates a glowing box that stretches along Third Avenue between 57th and 56th streets and wraps around the corner of 57th Street.

The entryway to the store is clear glass with an aluminum canopy to play upon the different types of glass on the façade as a whole. The interior of the store is arranged as a series of platforms to follow the descent of the sidewalk grade along Third Avenue.

The ceiling is a continuous sheetrock plane, ending short of the glass exterior to emphasize the boxy enclosure. The combined effect of the ceiling draws the eye through the expanse of the store, highlighting and framing specific displays.

The jury praised the retail design and construction team for working together to achieve such an unforgiving design.