Form Zero_Santa Monica : Studio 0.10

This is a 5,000 SF bookstore and gallery designed for a space in the 1984 Frank Gehry designed Edgemar mall in Santa Monica. The two programs required different levels of flexibility and each had to have the ability to operate autonomously while still providing a single architectural and business identity. A formal armature of walls, bookcases and shelving units demarcated the boundaries of the two programs. Conceived as an object set within a larger spatial field of the building shell, the armature is fully permeable allowing for fluid movement between the two programs. On the bookstore side, shelving units slide past the walls and one another as kinetic volumes and surfaces. The gallery used the armature’s wall surfaces as display surfaces for changing exhibitions.