furniture salon Inspira in Riga, architectural bureau Vincents-Concept

Passing the gallery

A photo: Evgeny Luchin

Text: Julia Shaginurova

Magazine: N11 (67) 2002

The formula "concrete and glass" during its existence has undergone several semantic metamorphoses: from the symbol of the architecture of the future, it turned into a sign of faceless typical building, then returned as a synonym for radicalism and crude expression. Using this formula to create the salon Inspira in Riga, the architects of the Vincents-Concept bureau primarily meant neutrality, self-sufficient expressiveness and conciseness of the material. Building a background for furniture of the world's leading designers, Riga architects play with all possible interpretations of "concrete architecture". The building looks like a military facility, an industrial warehouse and ... a museum of modern art. The long side wall with a luminous logo resembles a huge screen, cut through by a narrow strip of frameless glazing. The glass facade with a crosshair of massive steel beams "opens" a huge cubic volume of the store. The concepts of internal and external lose their direct meaning here; reinforced concrete, used both in the interior and in the exterior, opens up additional technical and aesthetic possibilities. The tension shell of a building takes on a constructive load, making traditional elements such as columns, partitions unnecessary, and opening up possibilities for free redevelopment. In the interior, monolithic concrete with soft tonal transitions, rough edges and natural "stains" creates a wonderful background for high-end objects, emphasizing any formal and coloristic solutions. The architects again and again beat the theme of contrast: light and heavy, rough and thin, deaf and transparent. The massive overlap between the floors of the building is a few meters away from the facade. Hanging over the first floor, it forms an expressive contrast to the light and concise forms of furniture CAPPELLINI, USM, BULTHAUP. A graceful nod toward modernism is a detached "box" of architects' studio. An elongated building with porthole windows and a lattice of horizontal planks raised above the ground on steel beams. The studio and the store are a wonderful example of a project that, being a self-sufficient architectural object, fully meets its main purpose - to be the background for objects with self-sufficient artistic expressiveness.