Buster’s Liquors

Occupying a large tenant space formerly housing a Staples supply store, Buster’s East brings design guided by idea and order to a nondescript environment. Balancing the need for an open retail floor plan with a desire to break down the scale of a voluminous space, the idea of creating “rooms” began to take shape. These rooms within the retail space lend order to the overall arrangement of display while decreasing the scale and feel of the large, uniform space. Rooms are defined using two contrasting design strategies. The first employs metal fabric draped from the roof structure, glistening as light reflects off the everchanging amber surface. The more substantial and permanent rooms utilized for tasting and point of sale are defined by large gypsum furr-downs descending from the roof above. Their presence offers a stark contrast to the lacy metal fabric; the juxtaposition between the two further defining each space.

A 90’ long back-lit whiskey wall culminating in a walnut-clad humidor, a series of fully glazed rooms including a climate-controlled wine tasting/storage room, a sales room, and a wall of coolers accented with barrel staves wrap around the perimeter of the four “rooms”. The outermost periphery is occupied by offices and a stock room which buffer the store from adjacent tenants. The retail “rooms” with their textural presence enrich an otherwise mundane warehouse space, generating order and reducing scale to create a more pleasurable shopping experience.