Our most recent updating of the iconic garden's retail store, where the word ‘shop’ on the door is the only real indicator there is a shop there at all.  So, easy to miss, we identified the need to open up the existing façade to allow direct sight into the shop. 

We proposed a shaded canopy, a collection of plywood sheets, with CNC cut leaf patterns, an abstracted ‘tree canopy’, forming a shaded space outside under which free-standing retail units can be positioned, and so providing further visual clue to the presence of the shop.

The canopy is the start of the journey thru the store which is turned into a significant visual event. As it passes into the store, the leaf pattern cut-outs evolve and disperse into individually cut leaves, birds, butterflies, insects.  An abstracted, ‘frozen-in-time’ narrative of the seasonal shifts in the garden, formed into a ‘story cloud’.

The success of our original 'trees' concept, introduced into the store more than 10 years ago in collaboration with artist Paul Edmunds, is that the trees, most obviously, connect the store directly with the garden itself.  The trees also filled the existing voluminous shop turning the space from an ‘exhibition stand’ store into one which claimed and grew into the whole space available.

The latest concept further occupies this space with the swarming dynamic cloud made out of the shapes of the smaller players in the garden, the mostly unnoticed lil’ guys and bits, the leaves, the birds, bees, ants.....

The cloud starts at the entrance doors and disperses thru the store in a strong indicative directional movement before rearranging itself and popping politely out again as a canopy under the existing pergola, subservient the strict order of the existing architecture of the building.

The elements are manufactured on a ‘zero waste' principal using FSC compliant plywood sheets.  Sawdust from the CNC milling process is collected, bagged and packaged in hemp fabric ‘grow-tainers’, complete with Kirstenbosch indigenous seeds, ready for instant planting.