Gold Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2022
The Animal Backbone Retail Store
by Eason Zhu
- A' Design Award 2022 Gold Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: FununitDesign
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 32,240
- Verification code E3CBD0768B · Verify this award
About The Animal Backbone Retail Store
The Animal Backbone is a retail store interior located in Shanghai, inside a historic building that once served as a slaughterhouse and is now a cultural and creative center. The space covers 100 square meters and is built with metal plate, mirror and glass. The layout follows the walking track of a cat, and a circle divides the inner and outer areas. Doors and windows allow views between the two zones, while living room, dining, kitchen and bathroom scenes are arranged inside. The design invites reflection on people and animals sharing the city.
Eason Zhu's The Animal Backbone Retail Store represents a compelling intersection of brutalist architectural heritage and contemporary retail design philosophy, transforming existing industrial infrastructure into a contemplative commercial environment. The design demonstrates remarkable sensitivity to found conditions, celebrating rather than concealing the massive concrete structural elements that define the spatial character. These monolithic forms, with their suggestion of vertebral or skeletal anatomy, establish an unexpected dialogue between the built environment and the organic world, perhaps referencing the companion animals for whom the products within are intended. The perforated metal screen system introduced by the designer creates a sophisticated spatial sequence, mediating between public circulation and retail interior while generating constantly shifting patterns of light and shadow. This scrim-like intervention establishes zones of varying transparency and privacy without imposing rigid boundaries, allowing visual connection while suggesting spatial distinction. The material palette demonstrates careful restraint, limiting itself primarily to concrete, glass, steel, and perforated metal, yet achieving remarkable richness through the interplay of surface textures, reflective qualities, and tonal gradations. The presence of a feline inhabitant within the space suggests that this environment has been conceived not merely as a commercial venue but as a habitat, a space designed to accommodate and celebrate the animals it serves. The reflective floor surface amplifies the architectural drama while creating a sense of spatial continuity that extends the perceived boundaries of the intervention. Visitors may find themselves contemplating how this design challenges conventional retail expectations, inviting slower movement and more attentive observation than typical commercial environments demand.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This once the first slaughterhouse in the Far East, where countless lives were got killed, it is fascinating but attracts a lot of tourists. Today, this building has become a famous cultural and creative industry center in Shanghai.
Respecting the tens of thousands of animal souls, we are always looking for a way to have a commemorative architecture, trying to make an icy building to echo the concrete, and to arouse the painful memories and facts of killing animals because of lust. - Dimensions & Packaging
- 100m2
- Tags
- animal,Moving line, Commemorative
- Production Technology
- metal plate,mirror,glass
- Design Challenge
- On the other side of the commemorative space, it wants to bring more thinking about the harmonious symbiosis between humans and animals. The meaning of the symbiotic space "animal backbone" is to bear the burden of history with the animal, Pursuing humans and animals how to better live in harmony in the historical environment and share the wonderful experience brought by this city. pidan proposed the concept of stray animal adoption, providing long-term supply of food for the stray cats and dogs in the 1933 old field.
- Project Duration
- 1933 Shanghai
- Operation Flow
- The whole project was initially thought to be shared by people and animals. Both of them live in the urban space, and they have their own interactive space and interactive space. The animal behavior is implanted into the space design, and in the premise, satisfy the function , through the simplest processing method to provide a platform to assist the pidan's brand and ideas.
- Research
- Regarding the design process, a narrative story was implanted when space was not yet characterized. Starting from the walking track of a cat, the inner space and the outer space in the space are divided, and the basic functions in the living state are divided by a circle. In such a space, there are doors, windows can ability to peep and observe the inside and outside. And in inside, there are living rooms, restaurants, kitchens, bathrooms, etc., which form the scene elements of life and form a bubble map.
- Inspiration
- Regarding the design process, a narrative story was implanted when space was not yet characterized. Starting from the walking track of a cat, the inner space and the outer space in the space are divided, and the basic functions in the living state are divided by a circle. There are doors, windows can ability to peep and observe the inside and outside. And in inside, there are living rooms, restaurants, kitchens, bathrooms, etc., which form the scene elements of life and form a bubble map.
- Image Credits
- Fununit Design & Zheng Shi