| Stacked and painted side tables by Sarah Edith and reinvented TOG chair by Varzez Queimada. |
| TOG's plastic children's table is reinterpreted as a mask by Carlotta Modica Amore and Matteo Orlandi. |
Together with architecture firm Triptyque, the French designer created this stunning, multi-purpose São Paulo showroom for TOG, a brand that encourages customers to devise their own furniture.
Everyone can be creative. That’s the idea behind TOG allcreatorstogether, a unique Brazilian brand of furniture that launched with a notable amount of fanfare during Salone del Mobile two years ago. Owned by Grendene (also the parent company of Melissa shoes), it encourages design-savvy customers to choose a basic piece of furniture from its staple of chairs, benches, tables and accessories, and make each piece their own by adding new colours, textures and materials. Customization is either completed by TOG’s network of artisans and craftspeople, or the add-ons are left to the buyer’s own creative inspiration.
Whichever way the furniture gets reinterpreted, the novel formula appears to be working, and earlier this year TOG’s first concept store opened on Faria Lima Avenue, a main financial hub of São Paulo.
Under the art direction of Philippe Starck, who has been involved with the company since its start (a number of the basic furniture pieces are by the French designer), Triptyque designed the bright, inspiring space. One of Brazil’s most innovative architecture firms, Triptyque kept the 2,108-square-metre interior, which was a games room in the 1980s, as naked as the furniture on sale. Basic all-white covers the exposed I-beams, concrete floors, and wide open spaces that look ready to be transformed in an instant.
The two-level shop allows for limitless flexibility, to accommodate a future full of various events that go beyond selling furniture. The owners are envisioning dance parties, social gatherings, and sit-down dinners as regular occurrences, and the space includes a new restaurant – Marakuthai for TOG, headed by chef Renata Vanzetto.
The TOG collection itself, which includes chairs by Antonio Citterio and Sebastian Bergne, fills the main floor, with samples raised onto double-stacked shipping palettes that are easy to move aside, and ceiling lighting that is held in place with clamps that can quickly be rearranged along the beams.
