PLATO

Plato is a Bangkok based contemporary furniture company– featuring sustainable teakwood furnishings. Working closely with Plato’s award winning head designer, Rush Pleansuk – whose work has a poetic and sometimes theatrical quality, we landed on the concept of the furniture showroom as a black-box theatre.

Having designed two locations, the largest and most recent is located at Bangkok’s Crystal Design Centre complex (CDC). This 500 square meter flagship showroom is anchored by a central ‘stage’– a 30 meter long elevated platform. The stage-spine serves as a focal point for the entire showroom with its ever-changing inspiring and creative presentations of furnishings, all highlighted under dramatic theatrical lighting designed by Inverse Lighting design of London & Bangkok.

Because the CDC caters heavily to design professionals, the Plato showroom provides accommodation for meetings and consultations on a mezzanine overlooking the entire showroom. Resources like material and finishing samples are available for referral and matching with designer’s schemes.

Whitespace retail design philosophy is grounded in two key focal points; the product and the people. We design stores whose primary goals is the presentation of the products on offer. We don’t design flashy stores where products are added to as a afterthought. And we consider the customer and their journey as a brand experience– attracting and inspiring customers through engagement with merchandise and staff. This approach generates retail environments that work like an operating system for the brand, allowing the merchandise to change and evolve with the trends without having the reconstruct and renovate frequently. Plato has been serving the brand and there customers for more than 10 years without any major changes to the design.