A flower shop is curved, naturally

Thursday 12 February 1998 00:02 GMT
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IN a space no bigger than coal bunker, 60 square metres with the cutting room in the basement, architect Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete of Future Systems have designed a flower shop on the cutting edge of architecture, NonieNiesewand writes. Surgical without being clinical, the new "Wild at Heart" in west London designed for Nikki Tibbles is a laboratory for ideas.

Single flowers in a test tube on bendy wire on either side of entrance vibrate as you step in.

The space is all white, walls and floors and built in platform storage cum seating all made of MDF lacquered white, "real white" in many coats. The only colour comes from the oval frame on the shopfront entrance, achieved as simply as painting white on the reverse side of the glass facade. The greenish tint in the crown glass (which isn't obvious unless the glass is painted or viewed end on) turns pistachio. A white mesh sail for a ceiling stretches taut on yachting halyards. There isn't a straight line in the place. Even the back wall curves.

It is the first shop by Future Systems, the prime practitioner of finding new ways to use old materials and new methods of building.

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