Original (orch-)ideas: Design by Serrano+Baquero for a flower shop

At Caladium, a small flower shop in Granada,  Spain, the time had come for change, with the owners taking necessary rehabilitation as an opportunity for interior alterations. The resulting changes are clearly on view through the shop's two large display windows.

Serrano+Baquero Architects have transformed the small shop measuring a mere 63 square metres in size into an oasis of green.  The space now consists of a pleasantly airy setting that lets the plants and flowers come into their own, whereas previously they hardly stood out in the sheer mass of vegetation.

The element of the ladder – the most important aide for the florists in their daily work– played a role of its own in the renovation measure.  Things are always being required from high shelves or need to be positioned in difficult-to-reach places, making some means of access indispensable.  Serrano+Baquero skilfully integrated the idea of the ladder into the interior by devising a combination of shelving system and means of climbing up and down that fits in perfectly with the small flower shop. Made of slender but robust structural timber, the fixtures provide plenty of room for the various types of plants and flowers, including orchids of course. The latter are the main protagonists in the small shop, and the new shelving system means they can finally be displayed in appropriate manner.

The fixtures are based on a stable system of floor-to-ceiling frames that mutually reinforce each other in a horizontal and vertical direction. The lower areas are taken up by partially closed modules that form counters and flat surfaces. Slender glass shelves round off the structure installed throughout, lending it a weightless quality. Fluorescent lamps mounted to the structural timber elements ingeniously underscore the personalised ladders and provide indirect lighting, bathing the room along with its contents in pleasant, diffused light.

White rendered walls create a friendly ambience and make the small sales area seem larger than it is. The occasional pillar and cross beam in fair-faced concrete zone the space and form a harmonious symbiosis with the pale wood of the ladder-inspired shelving system. Concrete has also been used for the new floor, rounding off the simple design to perfection.