Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

Urban Outfitters is ready for its close-up in Sweden

By John Ryan

It’s not often that you hear Stockholm mentioned in the same breath as, say, London or Paris. But Sweden’s first Urban Outfitters store might just provide a reason for doing so.

The two-story, 22,000-square-foot shop – the retailer’s ninth in Europe – is the outcome of many months of hard thinking and labor to convert a former cinema. It is also an example of how good can come from close cooperation between a city’s planning department, a multinational retailer and the U.S.-based design firm, Pompei AD (New York).

For a start, there’s the building itself. It was dubbed the Roda Kvarn (“red barn”) when it opened in 1915 as a cinema in Stockholm’s upscale Biblioteksgatan district, as a Scandinavian take on art nouveau and, a little later, art deco.

It was the city’s grandest movie house until the 1970s, when it morphed into an art-house cinema and its original dark wood and arts-and-crafts interior were painted over with heavy red and black paint. The end result was the conversion of a historical building into a cross between a bordello and a nightclub.

Little surprise, then, that one of the city’s conditions of approval for Urban Outfitters was that it restore, as much as repurpose, the cinema’s interior. Steve Morris, the retailer’s project director, received a 150-page document, drawn up by the city planners, outlining what would be required.

Standing outside the Roda Kvarn today, you could be forgiven for thinking you were still looking at a cinema. (Other than the red neon sign carrying the retailer’s logo.) The walk-in arcade, with its bank of light bulbs overhead and boxed-in windows on either side, still looks like the kind of place where a limo might glide up and decant a Hollywood star for a premier.

Inside, though, it is unquestionably a store. It has been subdivided into four distinct zones. First is the cashwrap zone, immediately inside the front doors. At this store, the cash desk is an event in itself, with extensive art deco detailing. Overhead is a gallery, accessed from the upper floor, with a modest display of art and a skylight that allows natural daylight to flood the space.