Hoffritz for Cutlery store - New York 1939 - Morris Lapidus, Architect

Morris Lapidus, an architect known for the flamboyant style of his 1950s Miami Beach hotel designs such as the Eden Roc and Fontainebleau, was also a first-rate, innovative store designer. In his 1996 autobiography, Too Much is Never Enough, he describes his early successes in the 1930’s in the field of retail store design. He was a pioneer of store design who developed many of the modern concepts, which today are taken for granted. He opened up storefronts to expose the merchandise and the entire store at once. He used bright colors and intriguing lighting to attract customers. For his stores and hotels, he developed a palette of amorphous shapes used in ceiling treatments, ornament, furniture and plans called chevrons, beanpoles, woggles and cheese holes. In time, his use of these shapes and his compelling color selections congealed into a gestalt that formalized as a Jetsons-like archetypical  design aesthetic that may have never really existed as a style, but which today is instantly recognizable. Stores like Starbucks, Panera, and the new McDonalds prototype have adopted many of his playful and entertaining design concepts.

The Lapidus store designs of the 1930’s and 40’s were groundbreaking in their expansive use of glass, focused lighting, intriguing plans, innovative signing, theatrical impact and timelessness. He was a fearless designer, who was regularly mocked by his more “sophisticated”  colleagues  as a “schlock meister”, but nevertheless continues to have a significant impact on the world of commercial design.