Ilan Dei to open Venice pop-up store and gallery
With its perforated aluminum gates, wide glass storefront and converted shipping containers painted a bright pink, the new Venice pop-up store from Ilan Dei Studio is scheduled to open Saturday with a blend of indoor-outdoor living, sustainability and classic California modernism.
Dei, whose studio designs and fabricates furniture and lighting as well as restaurant and store interiors, said the project represents an opportunity to experiment with retail.
“The model of our studio is design/build,” he said. “For me, design comes only from real experience with prototypes. I felt it was important to experiment in real scale to give exposure to our brand of furniture. What better than to experiment with our own model?”
Composed of a series of intersecting shipping containers, the pop-up store is rooted in the California indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Separate rooms surround an outdoor deck.
“Indoor-outdoor living is often great on paper but challenging in real life,” he said, citing the need to offer protection from the sun. He called the pop-up space “a true testing lab for California outdoor living.”
The pop-up will have three different sections: a traditional lifestyle store selling Dei’s outdoor Cord furniture, Namibia tables and decorative accessories; an art gallery with revolving curators; and a community area for events such as yoga classes and ping pong games.
“Our goal is to engage and experiment with the store,” Dei said. “We have no clue how long it will be open. That is what makes it so exciting. It could be two months. It could be a year. I previously had a store on Abbot Kinney for 10 years. I thought I would be there for a year.”
The Ilan Dei Venice Store and Project Lab is at 1650 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. A launch party for the public will be held 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Aug. 1, with DJ, drinks, food and video. Store hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. (310) 302-9222.
Follow L.A. at Home on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
