Mexican architecture practice VOID Studio has added soft pickish staircase and cabin-like stations to a beauty salon to amplify the beauty meachanism of work in Mexico City, Mexico.
Named Leonora Studio, the space was designed for Leonora Studio, a Mexican chain of beauty salons, grew and consolidated in Mexico City.
The salon was opened as a new Horacio Branch of the company in the Polanco neighborhood.
“Freshness, inspiration, charm, discreetly fancy” are the words that describe the mood of salon in a simple way. The design process of the two-storey salon was envisioned as part of a large brand building strategy – starting from the company’s operations and service, identity, graphic and architectural design.
VOID Studio was commissioned to define the general lines to design the essential character of the beauty salon to a material and spatial level.
The salon has a striking facade that opens up the whole process to outside. While front desk and waiting area are kept as cozy and attractive as possible.
Bar, clad in soft pinkish tones and attendants bar become the main protagonists of the interior. The salon has microblading rooms with clinical appearance and operation.
The gorund floor includes hair stations, pedicure stations, manicure stations and eyelash stations, which are all coordinated and in clear view for the ambassador, who is the person permanently taking care of the experience of clients and supervising the diligent activity of more than thirty employees in each branch.
According to the studio, “meeting the demands of Leonora’s range of services and its number of clients was a great challenge”. For this reason, the studio decided to address, precisely, taking movement as the core concept.
In the first stage, the studio aimed to understand the nature of operation of the company’s branches and the substantial points of its identity. Later, the team envisioned a spatial language that drives energy, dynamism, circulation and curves.
According to the team, the space had to convey the brand features and meet the needs of a beauty salon of this size.
“Its everyday activity was embedded, at different levels, all around the space: on the wood grain, the sinuous steps, the arches of the iconic mirrors and, delicately, on the translucent fabric clouds hanging on the ceiling,” said VOID Studio.
“The sense of amplitude is achieved by the use of glass –inward and outward– and by a rithmic disposal of mirrors that extend and amplify the perception, not only of the space but also of everything that is happening inside it,” the studio added.
In addition, the choice of materials play a key role in the project. The interior of the space looks like all furnitures are flying in the air with colors, the transparency reveals every movement inside and shows the nature of the work in the most abstract and beautiful way.
The team stated that “the selection of materials, besides, emphasizes the suggestion of the branch as a window display within which the client takes a protagonic and starring role, framed by the subtle sparkle of the brass sheets crowning each workstation.”
The lightning becomes also functional, while creating a comfortable atmosphere inside.
“Altogether with the color selection, intensifies the textures and its almost synesthetic quality, giving the place a sweet, soft and femenine taste,” added the studio.
“A taste that is constantly being complemented by the energy of the women and men that circulate all over the place.”
“Inspiration, freshness, charm and sophistication”
Leonora Studio represents “inspiration, freshness, charm and sophistication”, according to the architects.
This consistency is provided with beautifully-designed furniture pieces, which acts in line with the colors and materials.
The materials are a result of a careful choice of woods, textiles and plastics and robust enough for the beauty saloon operation, without undermining its identity.
Austrian and Mexican product designer David Pompa’s Origo Pendant lamps frame the entry and exit of the customers within flashes and bubbles of light, accomplishing, right in front of the Leonora sign, a key function in terms of the brand communication.
Besides all these details, the studio emphasized that “apart from considering Leonora Studio’s functional and aesthetical particularities, the project also entailed presenting a baseline design that could be applied to different spaces with different conditions.”
Within the company’s business plan, the company planned to open at least six new branches in only 2022.
As the team explained, VOID Studio won the tender to build the branches, and this job implied not just the adaptation of the architectural and interiorism lines to different spaces but to face challenging demands in terms of time and sources, demands that responded to the global strategy of the business.
“Regarding the former, the process was carried out by understanding and disposing modules meeting the central idea of movement, but considering, all along, the order and attention to details,” said the studio.
“Symmetries, matching lines, meticulous exploded views, consistent angles between walls and furniture; everything to reach the effect of balance and harmony in a place where energy runs intense and relentlessly.”
The careful work of each plan involved as much creativity as thoroughness, but provided the greater use of material and a very precise time and cost planning, something fundamental for the business.
“Movement” takes the stage in this salon
Leonora Studio’s Horacio Branch shows the experience gained from a side by side work between the architectural office and the brand, as well as the impact of maintaining a design concept at the core. In this case, movement.
While the salon is entirely opened through the glass wall, the iconic mirrors, the staircase and the service stations shape curves that arrange but also dress the place.
The salon makes it double-height completely visible from the outside, and according to the studio, “this recalls the image of the window display and replicates the amplification mechanism that, with the interplay of reflections, prolongs the space and the good experience of the clients.”
Ground floor plan
The colors add a sweet warmth that shines under the natural light, while lighting design contributes to sweet warmth and the sparkles of the brass sheets around the mirrors, columns and working tables.
The precision of the lines and the furniture arrangement bring order and circulation together although they are almost invisible on the floor.
To add the calm quality of the organic textures of the wood, the studio brings dynamism into the space through the sequence of steps, stations and chairs all over the place.
Upper floor plan
With the words of Energy and Movement, the space quality becomes consistent with Leonora’s brand, and the architectural design reaches a brave and delicate image that, in front of an enormous window, which makes impossible not to look at.
VOID Studio designed Cuatro cielos, an apartment complex comprised of tower-like volumes in Tulum, Mexico.
Project facts
Project name: Leonora Studio
Architects: VOID Studio
Location: Av. Horacio, Polanco, Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico
Design team: Luisa Fernanda Rodriguez Uranga, Joel Armando Martinez Valdez, Rodrigo Duran
Construction Team: ArqMains
Date: 2022
All images © Zaickz Moz.
All drawings © VOID Studio.
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