© Adrien Williams
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WETSTYLE, a manufacturer of premium-quality bath fixtures and furnishings for the North American market, is proud to unveil the refined elegance of its brand-new showroom, located in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, on Montreal’s South Shore. The dynamic space marks the final component of a new WETSTYLE complex that opened in January 2019, consolidating the brand’s manufacturing operations, executive offices, and showroom in a single location.
The showroom occupies the ground floor of a custom-designed 11,600 sq. ft. building, located directly below WETSTYLE’s corporate offices and state-of-the-art Design Lab, and connected via enclosed transitional corridor to the company’s 30,000 sq. ft. factory and operations facility. In addition to showcasing the brand’s elite product line in an optimally conceived environment, the showroom also features an open-air kitchen for hosting events, a museum-like section portraying aspects of product manufacturing, and a dedicated “WET-U” training facility for WETSTYLE agents, sales representatives, and design professionals.
Focused presentation
Atelier Moderno, a full-service design and architecture firm specializing in the creation of elegant and responsive environments through the manipulation of light, material, scale, and program, collaborated closely with the WETSTYLE Design Lab team to create a space drawing upon core elements of the brand’s identity and ideology. The project was honored at the 2020 Grands Prix du Design receiving the Best Showroom Award.
The challenge was to fill the showroom with distinct and intimate spaces, each highlighting an individual product, while maintaining the collective space’s open concept. Faced with an existing structure lined with expansive windows, there was also a need to eliminate outside distractions to ensure unwavering focus on the products.
“In approaching the scale of the products, the architecture, and the outside environment, we created a forest of floating walls that zigzag through the open space to create a circuit presenting different décors for each product”
-Jean-Guy Chabauty
(President of Atelier Moderno)
In a contemporary space of white with black contrasts, floating ceiling elements provide the effect of walls rising from beneath the floor and into the ceiling. The non-obtrusive walls isolate each product zone in vignette-like fashion, invoking sentiments of environments reflective of the products in use. Atmospheric lighting sets the mood of each product zone via strips and spotlights, reflecting off of a porcelain floor with marble-esque qualities that embrace the sophistication of the company’s high-end products.
