Interior Design of Retail Boutique Bossi & Ich Ky in Seattle... Created by A Bollen Design

Pioneer Square has just welcomed the latest opening of Seattle's newest retail boutique store, Bossi & Ich Ky. This high-end fashion establishment will sell men's and women's designer clothing and accessories. Owned and operated by a young couple who travel extensively to bring the most current trends and labels to downtown Seattle, Bossi & Ich Ky has raised the bar for the Interior Design of local boutiques. This project required the use of all the services offered by A Bollen Design, and allowed for total creative freedom due to the rush nature of the project. The owners basically said, "We're thinking of boutique stores in Europe, we've only got a couple months until opening (including construction!), we want you to run with it." A dream job for sure! Our first site visit (the day after new years) found an empty shell void of any walls, flooring or lights.

We were hired to transform a blank vanilla box into a hip yet classic space reminiscent of boutiques found in Europe in older urban centers. This feel was achieved with the use of current trend colors and materials coupled with classic wallpapers and design elements. Rich wood flooring adds to the overall scheme by complimenting the classic feel with its dark stain, a finish which was continued in the shelving and column wraps. A dark brown paint ceiling treatment helps to bring the space down (overall height is 18') to human scale, and add to the historical exterior of the building.


Additionally, the architecture and space planning bring out the boutique flavor by creating niche spaces and recessed interior lit merchandising areas to highlight the one-offs expected in a small shop. By lining the perimeter of the space with tall built-in merchandising elements, crowned with over scaled moulding to accentuate their varying heights and depths, we were able to successfully create a large scale feel with small store appeal. A full set of AutoCAD construction documents were produced by A Bollen Design for this project in order to communicate this detailed architecture accurately to the contractor, as well as to ensure permitting from the city building department. Shown in this paragraph is the overall floor plan, at a very reduced scale. The front entry is on the left, the cash wrap is in the middle, the spiral stairs lead to the upper loft office area, women's area is above and the men's is below. For some images taken during construction showing the framing of the built-ins we designed, as well as the initial site visit showing the blank vanilla box we transformed, view this previous blog.

Of course, the best way to experience our latest creation is to simply visit the boutique! (112 1st Avenue) The owners will be more than happy to show you around their store, and are continuing to add merchandise to fill the spaces we created for them, as you can tell from the empty shelves in the picture to the right taken by the women's fitting rooms. In the meantime, we'll be tweaking the finishing touches and details and checking off a bullet list of post-construction revelations as we go. Bossi & Ich Ky is our most amazing retail design yet, and best of all, it's open to the public (unlike our residential projects) so we can share this success with everyone! Drop us a line and let us know what you think...

For previous blogs on this project please view:
1) Retail Boutique Coming Together
2) Retail Boutique Under Construction

Landscape Design ~ The Town House Plan

Practicing my version of architecture means I get to geek out on simple things, like designing my garden. Rather than just say what I want, I'll use AutoCAD to create a comprehensive set of plans which will included elevations and sections for the decking / bench / stair element, site-work for the electrical and landscaping trenches, plans and etc. Let's do it. So after some measuring (and a year of living at our house in order to gauge what would be best for the garden), we have a solid plan in place. We had a spare weekend. We had a day laborer to dig our ditch. Hence this blog post, post spare weekend and post initial implementation.

Phase I - plant the screening. We chose bamboo as the privacy screen since the plant does quite well in the Pacific N.W. and isn't overly hedgey looking (my blog - my words). Our old house had bamboo running rampant, but some quick research revealed a way to conquer the power of rhizome. In short: dig a 21" deep trench with a slight funneling towards a narrow bottom. Install a 24" tall bamboo barrier, ours being a 40ml thick polypropylene sheet. Support the barrier with rebar, then refill the trench half-way with the original dirt and tamp down. Fill trench the rest of the way with a delicious compost/dirt 50/50 mix. The end goal of which is too encourage the rhizome to grow up towards the surface due to 1) being contained by a barrier that slopes outwards and guides shoots up 2) create an undesirable growing medium below (tamped down dirt) and a desirable growing medium above (delicious dirt). That way the rhizome can't escape its confines by travelling underneath your defenses.

This image shows me securing the ends of the barrier together using metal plates and bolts. Don't want the rhizomes able to sneak in between the overlap thereby bypassing my defenses! Anyhoo, the 21" deep trench with 24" tall barrier means you'll around 3-4 inches of material above the ground. The reason for this is to force shoots to expose themselves when trying to launch an invasion over your defenses. Pluck ... Ghandi goes the rhizome. Additionally, you fill the upper 3-4 inches with mulch to further lure shoots upwards into a warm and moist sunny surface. We plan to also cover the mulch with black rocks, which will make for a zen-like design. That being bamboo, cedar fence, black rocks, buddhaful.

Tricia donned her garden outfit ("fatigues" and pink gloves, fashion shades, ponytails) and started placing the the bamboo plants. Ours were purchased quite tall so that we don't have to practice patience. Privacy Screen Now Please. We adopted and planted 8 bamboo clusters. Already there's a huge difference at the townhouse. Also, my back feels great. Advice: hire a day laborer for heavy work. Ours had to axe through roots that were the size of trees. If I was doing the grunt work myself, one of two things would have happened after being blocked by the root: 1) broken back 2) the root would have become the designer (my trench would have stopped there)

Next we'll do the groundwork for the electrical run and the patio. The plan includes a water feature in front of the privacy screen, and uplights to highlight the existing laurel and newly planted bamboo. So another trench for the conduit, and then over that will be the patio. In our case we'll be installing a border of pressure treated wood, leveling and tamping down the area within this border, and then laying stone. I'll publish another post at that point.