Koshka
East Germany meets Japan.
Showroom and workspace for a Japanese online-fashion-brand based in Berlin.
Koshka emerged from a passion for Japanese fashion: its founders built the company by creating an online store for Japanese fashion designers who are still unknown in the West.
Berlin was seen as the perfect city for the company’s headquarters. Innovative and open to new business ideas and concepts, it also offers low rents. It wasn’t difficult to find a beautiful loft in the central suburb of Prenzlauer Berg and interior designer group kolor studio was commissioned to create the showroom and workspace.
The space had to meet various functions including a workspace, distribution area and showroom with changing room and storage.
kolor found an old, hand-coloured picture of Geishas in costume, which became the inspiration for colours and textures for the space. Being a start-up, budgets were small and so kolor decided to keep costs down by using waste products from building and demolition sites to create interior furniture.
Multiple suspended fabric walls serve as a dressing room and as a divider for the rear storage area. In the main area, recycled clothes rails run along the walls and old water pipes are attached as needed to display the latest collections. This series of pipes leads visitors around the centre of the room, which also has four desks, a sales counter and packing table. The tabletops are made from recycled internal doors, now painted gold and pink. The desks are made of modular boxes constructed from vintage East German cabinets. The boxes can be rotated, moved or interchanged with the next table and the result is an extendable and flexible office system that can easily grow with Koshka.
