Furniture Salon "Expocentre" in Tolyatti Dmitry Khramov, Olga Panarina

Passing the gallery

A photo: Vitaly Nefedov

Text: Julia Shaginurova

Architect: Dmitry Khramov, Olga Panarina

Magazine: H (76) 2003

Furniture salon "Expocentre" in Togliatti exactly corresponds to its name - it really looks more like an exposition than a retail space. Architects Dmitry Khramov and Olga Panarina turned two thousand square meters in the former building of a garment factory into a kind of exhibition of the achievements of modern design. Just look at the list of materials, in which burlap and glass are adjacent to a rusty professional sheet and a holographic film, in order to assess how much the conceptual environment the architects have come up with for tables, chairs and sofas. Having attached his aesthetic concept to the already existing enfilade (the neutral modernist kitchen hall and the classic rooms of the Nieri factory), the architects continued the walk-through composition and “looped” the visitor movement. According to the invented “scenario”, on this circular movement from zone to zone, there must be a change of sensations arising from tactile and visual contact with materials and objects. The entourage of each hall corresponds to the style of the furniture exhibited in it, and the names that the authors have invented for them speak for themselves: "Natur", "Universal", "Extreme" ... The last accents are arranged using translucent fabric screens and partitions. These ghostly light spots with shadows sliding on them do not so much delimit the space, as they are “lured” deep into the suite, where the visitor engages in this visual-tactile carousel, voluntarily or involuntarily.