Borruso Design: Store, Womb, Shrine, Paradise
Conveying The Vision
Persuading clients to embrace his offbeat vision is a Borruso specialty. “When you go to the client, you need to communicate with every tool at your disposal,” he says. “Sometimes it’s sketching. Sometimes writing. Sometimes it’s getting your hands dirty and sculpting a physical model. It’s an eclectic approach. We mix so many media, and so does the Mac. It allows us to be fearless in our command of words, pictures, 2D, 3D, whatever we need to make the client as inspired as we are.”
For the extraordinary, almost biological design of his Fornarina stores in Las Vegas and Rome, Borruso’s concept was “a regression to childhood, to infancy, even to a pre-birth state where you’re floating in amniotic fluid. When the space was finished, I felt like I’d been there before, long ago. And,” he smiles, “ my client told me he dreamed the same thing.”
We are primarily Mac-based, handling everything from basic administrative tasks — project management, correspondence — to technical drawings, rendering, sketching, and 3D work on the Mac. Client presentations are developed and presented on the Mac.
But Borruso emphasizes that the Mac is useful for far more than conveying ephemeral concepts. It also helps him with nitty-gritty construction solutions. An example: several large display elements in Fila that almost seem to hover in mid-air. “They’re stainless steel on top, but all that weight is supported by two transparent shields of contoured acrylic. By analyzing huge amounts of information, the computer helped us to control the molds very precisely, to push these materials to new limits, and use them for functions which may not have been attempted before.”
The Communal Mind
Both Borruso and Chang are quick to credit their Macs with helping the firm handle a deluge of new work with maximum efficiency. “It amplifies our communal mind, helps good ideas come to fruition faster,” says Borruso. Adds Chang, who often travels with Borruso, “our PowerBook G4 laptops are the perfect travel tool. They’ve been resistant to persistent wear and tear, and keep us seamlessly connected while on the road.”
And the road continually beckons, as Borruso continues to design both unique, individual stores and worldwide images of entire brands. The new Fila flagship store on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue is a prime example, creating a new template for the sports retailer that is simultaneously sophisticated and playful.
A Philosophy of Freedom
“As with the Mac,” he says, “we want to spark the user’s desire to explore. In everything we do, we always try to stick with that idea as a guiding philosophy. It’s not just about enabling a transaction. It’s always about the experience. And the space, the displays, the atmosphere is a big interface to that experience.
“People tell me I’ve been taking a lot of risks in the way I’m leading my company. But so far, the prize is that with each new project, we have more freedom to try new concepts. Every project is a journey. And every time, we try to do something different.”
