1G Store / Estudio Além

Architects: Estudio Além
Area: 3283 ft²
Year: 2022
Photographs: Francisco Ascensão
Lead Architects: Paula Navarro Mazón, Filipe Nunes Faustino
Program: Retail. Commercial.
City: Guimarães
Country: Portugal

The 1G Store, designed by Estudio Além, is a retail space in Guimarães, Portugal, that blends historical inspiration with modern design. The project aimed to provide a clear display of products and a striking store personality by incorporating elements inspired by the city’s historical castle and ramparts. Electro-welded wire mesh structures, reflecting the geometric patterns of medieval battlements, organize the interior spaces and create an ethereal, stone-free element. Local granite gravel fills these wire structures, transforming them into gabions that evoke a fictional historical moment. The store’s front counter, carved from large granite blocks, and additional elements like benches and fitting rooms, enhance the store’s unique scenography. Completed in 2022, the design merges Guimarães’ heritage with contemporary retail aesthetics.

The project focuses on remodeling the interior of a commercial space. The renovation aims to achieve two main goals: providing a clear display of the products and creating a striking design that gives the store a distinct personality.

The store’s interior design started with a study of the castle and city ramparts to evoke the historical heritage of Guimarães. Structural elements made of electro-welded wire mesh organize the interior spaces’ proportions, using geometric patterns to amplify the store’s interior.

The design centers on a single element: the medieval battlement. This recognizable geometric pattern that tops the city’s ramparts and towers, has been reimagined as electro-welded mesh made of galvanized steel. Transparent and reflective, the wire surface creates an ethereal, stone-free element. This battlement serves as a versatile display case for shoes, accessories, clothing, or mirrors. It repeats along the perimeter, providing a continuous backdrop and forming a virtual rampart inside the store—a complex maze of interwoven metallic grids with transparencies, glazing, and depths.

Once the virtual rampart is created and its weight and material erased, it is unevenly filled with local granite stone along its entire length. Twenty-three tons of gray granite, crushed into gravel with particle sizes between thirty and sixty millimeters, fill the structure. The gravel transforms the rampart into gabions, enclosing a pseudo-ruin and collapsed walls, capturing a specific fictional moment in the history of this new rampart.

The front counter is made from two large granite blocks directly extracted from the quarry. The excavators’ shovel grooves are prominently highlighted. These blocks were manually carved to reveal a glass and stainless steel compartment for small accessories.

The structural details, fasteners, fittings, and accessories simplify the store’s setup and display organization. Additional elements, like benches and fitting rooms, bring personality to the space and highlight the scenography.