MILESTONESMILESTONESDelivering a design for the Frame Store in
a remarkably short time taught Dellensen
and Jansen to trust their intuition.& JASPAR
2014
FRAME STORE
‘Robert [Thiemann, editor in chief of Frame]
came to us because he liked our work,’ says
Jansen, recalling the conversation that
preceded i29’s first-ever retail project and
first-ever pop-up. ‘He had an opportunity to
open a store in Amsterdam’s monumental
Felix Meritis building, but he needed to
decide within a week. He asked us if we were
up for a challenge.’
Not simply a challenge, the Frame
Store was a game-changer. ‘We normally
invest a lot of time and effort before a
project is built, but here we had to move
incredibly quickly – a couple of days for
design and a few weeks for construction.
We learned that you don’t necessarily need
a lot of time, money and materials to make
something good.’ The designers say they
developed a stronger sense of intuition
while working on the store. They knew they
tended towards rational thinking – ‘theseare the users, this is the programme’ – but
the short timeframe allowed little room
for close scrutiny. ‘We simply had to feel
that our design was right,’ says Jansen.
Their design was both a ‘three-dimensional
experience of the magazine’ and a response
to the overwhelmingly ornate interior that
awaited at Felix Meritis. Doubling as prod-
uct displays, mirrored boxes duplicated and
visually amplified the surrounding space.
Jansen and Dellensen felt the pres-
sure of working for spatial-design cogno-
scenti. ‘We knew the whole world would be
watching’, says Dellensen. ‘We could have
gone to Pinterest – or even to the pages of
Frame – and picked and blended the top
ten interiors from the previous year, but we
feel that looking inwards to the essence of
a brand is important.’ A few years later, i29
was asked to be part of a complete overhaul
of Felix Meritis scheduled for 2019. »Ew
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