freitag store kyoto

2019
Context: Interior, Furniture, Experience
Role: Concept & Design
Partners: Torafu Architects, Tokyo
Nominated Dezeen Awards 2019

With its first store in Kyoto, the Zurich-based bag manufacturing company now opens a new location in the country with which it shares a passion for the used, wabi-sabi aesthetic look. 

Only in Kyoto do the old and new work so well together, they say. At the end of the day, everything works for FREITAG when cycles close and used truck tarps go into circulation as new bags. For this reason, the new 80-sq.m store is modeled entirely on the industrial-style logistics warehouses at the company’s headquarters in Zurich. This is something visitors can feel, smell and experience for themselves. Because, among other things, the store has its own workshop where they can fulfill their DIY ambitions and produce their own unique miniatures from tarp offcuts.

The premises, now converted into a tarpaulin distribution center, stock around 1,100 recycled, one-off bags. And just so visitors to the Kyoto store never forget the origin of every unique specimen, a highway-life-size mural of a truck dominates the outside of the newly opened shop.