An Avant Garde Furniture Dream
The new Honolulu Design Center is similar to Mainland multi-gallery furniture showrooms, except that it’s open to the public, not just to designers. Above all, says Tom Sorensen, it’s a place to dream
By Chad Pata
E-mail this story | Print this page | Archive | RSS |
Del.icio.us
Sorensen discusses lighting with Dexter Kumano and
Adam Johnston
concept, a store that is like no other,” says Sorensen. “In Miami Beach, Chicago, New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, there is no one doing it like we are doing it. Can your market sustain it? I believe so.”
The Amuse wine bar features 80 different wines, all dispensed by automatic wine dispensers at a dollar an ounce - one of only about six machines like it in the world. HDC will provide swipe cards you charge up and then let your inclinations take you where they may. No word on how bartenders are taking this.
The Cupola events theatre can accommodate up to 160 people for fashion shows, fundraisers or mini-operas. The room is covered by a 30-foot shell-shaped skylight that can be retracted so that events can be held under the stars.
As for the restaurant, Sorensen gets a big smile on his face when he speaks of it.
“The furniture is going to be very weird,” says Sorensen. “It’s a place where people are going to say these people are nuts, they are crazy.”
Reservations will be made not by location, but the type of table you want, literally. You can request a Fendi or Natuzzi table, to allow yourself the experience of eating on the product before actually purchasing it. The food is being prepared by up-and-comer Jon Matsubara, a Punahou grad who most recently ran the kitchen at CanoeHouse at Big Island’s Mauna Lani Bay Hotel.
The decor will be by Dutch artists Erwin Olaf and Marcel Wanders, known for their outrageous combinations and edgy photography, which incorporate vivid, and sometimes disturbing, images. But as Sorensen says, it’s a design center, and art is part of the process.
Sorensen with Peter Skaaning of INspiration, which
will occupy one of the six galleries
Which brings us back to the design of the building itself. Originally Sorensen had planned to build it on the Flamingo Chuckwagon spot back in 1999, but by the time he had building permits approved, his dream had already outgrown the space he had purchased.
The current location seemed perfect for his purpose with the exception of its narrowness. So he brought in RIM architects to help his vision become reality.
They drew up a plan with two semi-circles intersecting one another, allowing entrances to be made from either one-way street and creating a building 430 feet long but only 70 feet wide. This, along with the unconventional colors of the place, gave it a bumpy ride getting the city’s approval.
“Initially it was very difficult - everyone is used to the Hawaiiana with its green sloped roofs, but this is a design center,” says Sorensen.
“And they didn’t like the color initially, so there was a lot of selling involved. But we wanted to make a statement, and we have people drive by today and it has the ‘Wow’ effect, and we receive a lot of compliments and very few complaints.”
The design also will draw in customers, according to Sorensen, who believes crowd control is going to be one of his biggest problems.
“I don’t like to say the people of Hawaii are nosy, but they like to know what is going on in their neighborhood,” says Sorensen.
Yes, niele we may be, but it is yet to be seen if we will spend as much on a sofa as we would on an SUV.
But on the bright side, it would be a lot cheaper at the pump.
Page 2 of 2 pages for this story < 1 2
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS
Most Recent Comment(s):
