OBEY Amsterdam
Multifunctional Shop & Art space
Amsterdam | NL
2021
The second iteration of OBEY stores in the heart of Amsterdam’s flagship hub ‘The Nine Streets’ riffs off of the Paris blueprint: inviting street culture in. The shop doubles as an art space, and — when times allow — an event space. But the project also provided an opportunity to feed back into the culture.
To display the apparel, we designed a family of furniture. Each consists of three parts: legs, a plateau, and a top in steel, in tiles, or handcrafted ceramics. OBEY rose from and continues to nurture a community of creatives, so we scoured the scene and got some local friends involved. For the bespoke steel welding, we enlisted creatives Well Well Well, whose non-pandemic ‘day job’ is running one of Amsterdam’s hotspots. The ceramic tops that crown some of the creatures were hand-sculpted by Amsterdam artist and nightlife fixture Eva van Essen.
The furniture takes its proportions from the measurements of the black and white checkered floor that dominates the basement level. An OCD dream, the legs sit precisely on the tiles’ intersections. From the basic principle of legs-plateau-top, these creatures are easily reconstituted in different versions, moved around and placed in ever new combinations and positions.
Of course, Giant Face returns, even bigger and bolder than before, stretched over the two floors of the split level shop. In a characteristically irreverent move, we took the existing fancy marble counter, and spray-painted it black, sparing only the lettering of the OBEY logo.
Team
Renée AppeloMatthew Riches