PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
This place is a magazine browser's delight.
It is magazine shop Allscript at I12 Katong mall, the first retail store of magazine distributors Allscript Establishment.
It is a delight not just because of its magazine focus but also the particularly reader- friendly nature of its shelving.
Principal architect Wu Yen Yen of architectural firm Genome Architects and Design Consultancy explains the challenge: "Magazines are typically stacked on shelves one on top of the other, so you see only the titles but miss out on the chapters on the left-hand side of the cover. And if you do it in this way, you also lose a lot of retail space."
A further challenge was that she had to work within a very tight area - a retail space measuring about 4.6m by 3.3m - perhaps smaller than a bedroom in an average HDB flat.
After experimenting with different magazine layouts, she came up with a solution - a curving display space with concave and convex surfaces, and magazines tiled diagonally on plywood shelves. This maximises the display space and also enables customers to see more of the magazine covers for titles such as Rotorworld and Vintage, says Ms Wu.
She adds: "It's curving towards you, so the magazines follow your eye. Magazine covers are very colourful and packed with a lot of information, so it becomes this very textured and colourful display."
Allscript Establishment is owned by Mr Richard Tan, 50, and Ms Wu says: "The idea had to come across very strongly that Allscript specialises in magazines. Allscript also wanted to impress on shoppers the extent of the titles it has, so it wanted as much exposure as possible for the magazine display."
The project, which was completed last year, took six to eight weeks. The result is a sort of tightly organised clutter but with a depth that showcases the full extent of Allscript's titles.
This story was first published in The Straits Times newspaper on November 3, 2012. Read the story here.