Highmens Showroom

Highmens sells menswear and suiting, and the unit it sells it from is a corridor. Far deeper than it is wide, one frontage, no side light at all. In a room this shape every decision turns out to be a decision about the two long walls.

A shop like this fails one of two ways. Fill the middle and it becomes a passage nobody can pass. Leave the middle empty and it reads as a waiting room. We put everything on the walls and kept the floor clear from the door to the back, so the length of the unit works as an approach instead of an obstacle.

The right wall carries the selling. A continuous counter at waist height, hardwood below with a poured top, and above it open cubbies sized to a folded shirt. Fabric reads as colour when it is stacked on its edge, so the depth of a cubby was set by the bolt and its height by the stack, not by a module that happened to look right on a drawing.

Above that sits a grid of smaller pigeonholes for accessories. The whole assembly stops short of the ceiling and leaves a band of white above the merchandise, because a shop stocked to the ceiling has no top to it and feels lower than it is.

The left wall hangs. Suits and jackets on a single rail at full height with a closed unit at the far end for stock, so the two walls do different jobs and a customer always knows which side to be looking at.

One counter, near the door, with a leaf that folds down on hinges so the staff side can be opened up or closed off depending on the day.

The detail drawings set it in hardwood throughout with the working top specified separately. A surface that takes scissors and pins every day of its life should be replaceable without anybody having to touch the carcass underneath it.