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Umbra

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shmoopie nhi

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Umbra to open T.O. store
February 10, 2007

Umbra has announced it will open a 7000-square-foot, two-storey retail concept store in Toronto this spring.

Known as a worldwide leader in contemporary home products, Umbra's roster includes garbage cans, picture frames, window treatments, kitchenware, tabletop accessories, decorative hardware and furniture.

According to a press release, the store, to be located at 165 John St., "will be wrapped in translucent pink cladding, creating a beacon-like glow," while the interior will be "sleek, minimal and white."

Umbra was founded in 1979 by boyhood friends Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan.

Umbra products are sold at more than 25,000 retailers in more than 75 countries.

www.thestar.com/Life/article/178833
 
Oh, goody, a whole emporium of Karim Rashid's disposable plastic crap.
 
Umbra Retail Store (Queen W & John)

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February 15, 2007

Architecture and Design

Umbra tickled pink with new design


BRIAN BAKER

staff writer

Umbra, world-wide leader in contemporary design products, is planning its first concept retail store in the heart of Toronto’s Entertainment District and the exterior colour of it will be surprising.

The 7,000 square foot, two-storey building at Queen and John streets in Toronto is being toted as the doorway to the “design culture corridor†that includes CityTV, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario Colllege of Art and Design, said John Shnier, principal architect with Kohn Shnier Architects.

Kohn Shnier Architects think pink will catch the eyes of consumers along Queen St. W. in Toronto.

Using the shell of the former Young Thailand restaurant, the biggest problem faced by Shnier was trying to create visibility on Queen.

“It has to create an image for the company that is both timely and timeless,†Shnier told Daily Commercial News. “It describes an innovative and forward moving company that at the same time wishes to be inclusive and not elitist in terms of their design wares and the public.â€

Umbra asked Kohn Shnier to pick a building in Toronto that was small and give it “presence.â€

“Umbra wanted us to capitalize on the kind of branding and identity as on their head offices.

“That’s interesting in a nostalgic way, but not remarkable,†adds Shnier.

The building has been gutted to its base structure and the envelope is receiving an environmentally-friendly upgrade.

Shnier said the building will maintain its “prismatic volume,†clad in a plastic decorative veil reminiscent of Umbra’s head office, also designed by Kohn Shnier.

The pink veil will float approximately eight feet off the ground, project out one foot from the building.

“The colour of the building is pretty surprising,†said Shnier. “We’re making it spectacular, accessible but at the same time mysterious and seductive.â€

The lowest point of the building is connected to the main level with a series of “step landings†designed by Figure 3 Interior Design.

Chris Wright, design partner with Figure 3, said the biggest challenge with the interior design was creating an entrance that gave people a “full picture†of the retail space. The entrance also included landing at grade for easy access.

Access to the second floor is gained through a main circulation path of five step landings.

“It will create a sequence of landings onto which product can be displayed, but also it’s a more gradual access to the second floor,†said Wright.

Figure 3 custom-designed fixtures for the interior to suit Umbra’s product through scale, size, colour and material.

“That’s always a challenge, displaying so many different products,†added Wright.

“In setting up a retail environment like this, there’s a lot of tweaking with point-of-sale systems, the fixtures, the mercandizing and the lighting.â€

Umbra’s concept store is scheduled to open May, 2007.
 
Hot.

But, as someone who usually likes everything to be clean and modern in the city, I'm afraid that many of the indpendent and unique stores along Queen Street are being forced out by these big name labels. Many of these stores can be found almost anywhere in the world.

Louroz
 
^yes this just north of the corner, immediately south of the new Core condo building. Hopefully it will face the park on the inside of the block as well.
 
Hopefully it will face the park on the inside of the block as well.
Click to expand...

...you mean the crappy patch of littered grass where all the drug dealers hang out?
 
Incidentally, I was surprised to see last time I was down on Queen that the whole area is becoming a big retail building construction site. I know many will complain about Queen changing etc. etc. equals bad but I find it interesting that rents must be so high that it has become economically feasible to pursue this type of urban infill and redevelopment.
 
Hey, just one more cool thing making this city stand out more. Tourists walking will have alot to look at.
 
If Queen changes it means other parts of the city will change as well. Nothing wrong with that.
 
Jcpatain: that's exactly the park I was refering to. The more the surrounding buildings face the space and give peple reasons to be there the better the space will become. A lot of the buildings still turn their back to it which doesn't help.
It is actually a popular lunch spot in warmer months and having retail face it would not be a bad thing.
 
Umbra's new flagship offers design in action

KAREN VON HAHN

E-mail Karen von Hahn | Read Bio | Latest Columns
June 2, 2007

Ever heard of Les Mandelbaum? How about Paul Rowan? Didn't think so. Now, walk around your house and take a look at your wall clock, picture frames or trash can. Chances are you'll see a small, elegant U somewhere. It stands for Mandelbaum and Rowan's design company, Umbra.

Umbra is the anti-Roots. Like Roots, it's a company founded in the 1970s by two childhood friends, but unlike high-profile Roots front men Michael Budman and Don Green, these two have avoided the celebrity limelight, spending the past three decades quietly building their brand. Over the years, they have helped make others, like design star Karim Rashid, into household names.

Pioneers in the now booming cheap chic movement, Umbra's line comprises more than 2,000 contemporary, affordable products for the home, sold through 25,000 retailers in 75 countries.

The one thing they haven't done is brand themselves.

This weekend, however, as Toronto kicks off its cultural renaissance with the big reveal of Daniel Libeskind's crystal extension to the Royal Ontario Museum, Umbra too will be in the spotlight. Twenty-seven years after Rowan and Mandelbaum first started making blinds (hence the name Umbra, which means "shade" in Latin), the company is opening a flagship store, in the same Queen West quartier they started in.

"You have to be a certain vintage to remember how iconic this building is," says Mandelbaum, who has cycled over to the John Street construction site to meet me. "Stadtlander had a restaurant here. It used to be the Cow Café, and the Avocado Club and then Young Thailand. We got our first $40,000 loan at the bank around the corner at Queen and Simcoe -- Paul still owes me $10,000."

For Rowan, the attraction was all about the simple lines of the "Bauhaus-y" building. Last fall, when they heard it was on the market, they snapped it up. Now, the two watch as workers put the finishing touches on an exterior frieze of extruded polycarbonate in a vivid magenta, which will scream "Umbra" to passersby.

"Toronto is a great design city, with the most creative design minds in the world, but the most boring city for architecture," Rowan says.

Adds Mandelbaum, "We figured that if anybody should step up to the plate, it's Umbra."

Courtesy of Toronto architect John Schnier and fixture designers Figure 3, a huge steel beam now slashes diagonally across the store front's window to support the radically opened-up cathedral interior. Everything is white, sleek, futuristic, floating -- almost glowing, thanks to concealed ribbons of LEDs.

Along with a rotating collection of Umbra classics, the store will feature their Umbra+ "couture" line, as well as limited-edition "experimental" products.

"It was kind of annoying the way retailers would always say to us, 'If our customer doesn't get it within 90 seconds of wheeling her shopping cart by the display, then we don't want it,' and some of our best ideas would be left on the wall," says Mandelbaum, who looks forward to having a forum to express what Umbra is all about.

To that end, a lit wall of Umbra icons forms a sort of brand museum. A changing exhibition of "Umbra art" designed by the company's 30 industrial designers will be for sale. A rear "graffiti wall" features a collage of designers' notes torn out of sketchbooks and renderings from their computer screens. "We really believe in giving complete credit to all our designers," explains Rowan, who sees it as part of Umbra's role to nurture creative talent.

As if in illustration, the pair keep introducing me to yet another adorable - probably inexpensive - dewy design grad who they have just taken on (as in, "This is Michelle, our design cop," or "Here's Shir. Ask her anything you want to know about the store").

On the second level is a bookstore as well as a studio where Umbra designers will actually sit and work. "It will be cool to see what happens when people can see the kind of thinking that goes into product design," Rowan says. "Not to mention how the designers will interact with real people, their end users."

Another innovation is an enormous glass wall facing the park behind, which will work as both a public exhibition space as well as a sort of community streetlight. "That park has always been sort of, well, challenged, as a safe place to hang out," Mandelbaum says. "The thing is, it's right between Frank Gehry's new AGO and the new opera house. If culture follows art, then we feel it's important to do our part."

If anybody out there still thinks design is just window dressing and a store is just a place to sell products, it's high time they meet Les and Paul - and Umbra.
 
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