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Aligning with Tait’s philosophy for outdoor living, it was important for the furniture brand’s new flagship store to reflect the outside, inside. Tait brought DesignOffice onboard to make it all happen, and the firm worked with the natural, exterior elements to inform the showroom interiors. ‘We wanted to avoid the standard clichés and evoke the emotion of being outdoors with light and greenery, as well as materiality and topography,’ explains Damien Mulvihill of DesignOffice.
Embodying this concept, full-scale vertical screens depict scenes of the great outdoors, and a palette of almost 20 paint colours have been used. The varying shades of blues and greens are intended to evoke an emotive response and keep eyes moving through the space. Meanwhile, the location’s vast glass frontage has been utilised to make the most of sun at different points of the day, with beams streaming through north-facing windows, and plants carefully hung to filter pools of dappled light from the west. It’s really pretty dreamy!
Every element of the Tait store has been considered with the customer in mind, with the retail experience literally built into the store. A series of stand-alone timber counters custom-made by joiner John Beckwith allow customers and retail staff to interact naturally, whereas a ‘zoned’ approach to Tait products invites people to browse through areas (including a dedicated plant-filled space) with ease.
Having designed and crafted all their furniture in Melbourne for the last 25 years, Tait have certainly earned a flagship as fine as this, reflecting the quality and influence of their work. Tait’s Creative Director, Susan Tait, agrees, ‘It’s our first major flagship store, designed to showcase our entire range of products and bring our ethos of “A Life Outside” into full, living colour,’ she says. Congrats guys!
Visit the new Tait flagship store at 209 – 211 Smith Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
