The team at Johannes Torpe Studios has helped companies of all shapes and sizes tell their brand story through strong design concepts since 1997. With a founder who has never undertaken any formal education and has worked across a multitude of creative industries, the studio is an advocate for an unrestrained and fearless approach to design. The company touts to know no boundaries when it comes to scale, discipline, media or market. In their creations they include all senses and rethink all dimensions through strong concepts and narratives. The studio has been called unconventional on more than one occasion and wears this with pride.
United Cycling distributes and sells carefully chosen high-end brands for the bicycle market in Northern Europe. At the core of their business you find dedication to quality, craftsmanship and an ambition to move the industry forward. Their first ever flagshipstore and showroom designed by Johannes Torpe Studios reflects these underlying principles. Correspondingly part of the task was to create a place for riders of all kinds to meet up and cultivate their joined passion for the sport. Taking its starting point in the craftsmanship behind a carbon fibre bicycle, the design blends elements from the world of technology, engineering, mechanics and community.
The showroom is constructed as a chapel for the bikes–a place where they are elevated and admired for their technical superiority. It is a space that displays the power of the product and invites you to inspect, touch and admire the bicycles from all sides. The open space and transparent divisions between the functions equally allows for a full overview of the world of high performance cycling–from the physical to the technical realms. With this project, the team has transformed a classic old storage facility into a conceptual retail space and HQ facility that fosters knowledge, learning and innovation and perhaps even more important, inspires people to dream.
Materials used
Exterior: Perforated white lacquered aluminium plates, Concrete tiles, Wooden lamellas
Interior: Oak, Raw and Black Steel, Concrete, Ultra-clear and Reflecting Glass, Aluminium, Linoleum, Barrisol