A rough ride

Client: Protest. 2007

If one is asked to design the store of a wicked snow- and surfboard brand, it is easy to just dress the space with the obvious equipment for sale. Instead, with the Protest shop in Biarritz (FR), we opted for a slighty more modest approach. The shop’s front, for instance, is decked out with graffiti - surf-rides, waves, rips and curls – but the shop-windows lack the evident mini malibu’s and such. A bowed steel rack resembling the curves of a wave invites woolgatherers to drift off in-store.  The brand’s hexagonal logo is repeated on the ceiling. One of the sidewalls is given a demolished look by sticking on printed wallpaper – a photocopy of our home interior as it looked when we bought the property. Missing on the images is a cabinet with two wooden surfboards of the owner of the shop.