Interior Design

Mixed Media: Boutique Mentality

Jan 2009

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 1/1/2009

Most national retailers cookie-cutter their stores. But Anthropologie, an offshoot of Urban Outfitters, shrewdly camouflages 118 units as one-off regional boutiques. Designing nine nationwide-one of which earned an Interior Design Best of Year Award "merit" citation-Robin Elmslie Osler of EOA/Elmslie Osler Architect has become adept at the masquerade. "Our choice of exterior materials is grounded in an awareness of local conditions," she explains.

Consider the contrast between 10,000-square-foot Anthropologie locations in the South and the West. In verdant Huntsville, Alabama, she dressed the exterior in succulents and sedum, then accessorized them with swaths of whitewashed cypress boards installed "fence"-style. She mimicked the very different textures and colors of the Northern California landscape for a Burlingame store's 20-foot-wide facade, with its walls of concrete brick, accented by translucent resin bars, and ipé rods, some sheathed in copper.

The biggest challenge as the rollout continues? With effects so dramatic, it's hard to resist borrowing.

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