Gary Card for LN-CC

Set Designer Gary Card has teamed up with new east London retail concept store LN-CC – the brainchild of John Skelton (ex oki-ni and Harrods) and Daniel Mitchell. Card applies his stark surrealist aesthetic to a former boxing gym in Dalston, transforming it with a futuristic forest, an octagon wooden tunnel, a concrete room housing a record and book store, plus three climate-controlled product rooms. AnOthermag.com presents a peek inside the store and speaks to Gary Card about his contribution.

Card describes the environment he produced for the pioneering store as “both industrial and organic – futuristic yet naive and raw in execution” and occasionally as “whimsical”.  For Card, the move into retail design wasn’t as intuitive as he’d imagined. “In a lot of ways I treated it like a set, but like the ultimate set, a platform to experiment with materials and ideas,” he explains. “I approached this project the same way I do with my other design work – concept pitch, development, execution. There were, however, a lot of new rules to learn.”

For an artist used to seeing his work routinely dismantled after it has served its purpose, creating something more enduring was attractive.  “Most of my work has a shelf life, it comes out in a magazine and disappears a couple of weeks later,” he says. “I wanted to try my hand at something solid, something permanent. The tricky part was then considering the product, how do you serve the retail aspects of the store without compromising the design? My first approach was to treat it like a gallery space with only a few pieces on show; I quickly learned this just wasn't realistic. Atmosphere is important but you can't ignore the product.”

Shopping in LN-CC's fascinating retail environment is by appointment only. To book an appointment go to www.ln-cc.com/page/appointments. Alternatively, shop online at ln-cc.com.

Text by Laura Havlin

LN-CC is open now. 18 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ.