Control Z had a vision for changing the consumption of the artefact of the 21st century; the phone. Phones go in and out of fashion each year, and this results in a devastating impact on the mineral resources of earth. Their company tries to tackle this by refurbishing new, older phones. Doing so also reselling luxury phones at affordable prices. The task was to represent this vision in the architecture of their first retail store.
The idea was to bring the energy of their workshops to the people. Inducing transparency in their process, would build trust to the consumer. To bring out the ideas of sustainability that power their vision, local materials with low embodied energy were introduced; lime for the walls and Kota stone for the floor. To introduce their process and story, tools from their actual labs are pinned to the walls. In this way, the tradition of a clean, minimal store that hides behind the covers is broken; what one gets is edgy raw and in a process of assembly and refinement. The architecture becomes a metaphor of their assembly line. The technophilic enthusiasm which is in the hands is spread out on the walls.
