Friday, March 4, 2011

Brooklyn Flower Shop









   The site of the project was located adjacent to the Greenwood Cemetery in 
Brooklyn, New York. After an analysis of the site, it became apparent that most of the 
consumers who would be shopping at the flower shop were going to be those who were 
visiting the cemetery. I began the design process by creating a three dimensional map 
of the cemetery in order to understand the planning of it. In my analysis I found that 
most of the built structures, pathways and land forms were located on the outskirts of 
the cemetery and a clearing was in  the center. These built structures, pathways, and 
and land forms are what became the system of organization of the flower shop. It was 
an attempt to recreate the consumer’s experience in the cemetery, in order to find clarity 
in the center. 

   After researching Stephan Holmlid’s essay entitled Service-Scape and White 
Space: White Space as A Structuring Principle in Service Design. I began to wonder 
about the white space in a retail setting, and what the true meaning of this is. White 
space in design is defined as empty spaces in design, it is used to separate design 
elements. For instance, it may be the space in a magazine separating the title of an 
article from its contents. I then defined the White space in this spatial sequence as time. 
The time between consumer’s the entrance into the store, and the time they purchase 
the products.The displays on the outermost spaces surrounding the point of sale (which 
is the clearing in this case) are completely opaque, and only displaying few flowers. 
 As the consumer moves closer the point of sale, the displays change into a translucent 
material that display more flowers. The final displays that are closest to the time when 
the customer purchases the products are completely transparent and the flowers are 
overflowing. The transparencies are a comment on the space and time between the 
consumer and the product. 

  The project allowed me to explore the human being’s perception of space 
through different levels of transparency, translucency, and opacity. The mapping of the 
cemetery, allowed for a certain disorientation of the consumer, but the transparencies 
gave the ability to always framed views of what was to come.


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