Salon X Papas is an environment both fashionable and timeless, bringing a new experience of sequence and ceremony to a well-loved brand while maintaining the client’s vision. A double-height cutting-floor is conceived as a ‘room in a room’, allowing auxiliary functions to occur around a generous primary volume.

Salon X Papas is a new hairdressing salon located on the ground floor of the Lucent development in Newstead, Brisbane. The 128-square-metre tenancy is visible from the street and adjacent laneway. With customer experience acknowledged as the driver for the project, Salon X Papas draws heavily on the themes of sequence and ceremony. Upon entry, an intimately scaled reception of paired back finishes steps and folds, with a built-in leather cushioned cantilevered concrete seat an initial setting for pause and preparation. Magazines are read, and sparkling water served on intricate platters.

The cutting-floor has been designed as a room within a room and is located central to the plan and to the customer’s experience: a perforated box that offers glimpses through arched openings that draw the eye, while never genuinely revealing the events inside. An extended entry path to the side of the cutting-floor provides the required equitable access while extending the experience of the entry sequence. Inside, the energy and theatre of the cutting-floor are revealed as a generously proportioned double-height volume, with a mirrored ceiling amplifying its vertical nature. In juxtaposition, the hair wash area is cave-like with dark walls, low ceilings, black joinery and bronze mirrors.

As the nature of Fashion is to continually change, designing a space that could last for decades was a challenge. The strategy was to develop a timeless scheme based on spatial quality and theatre rather than colours, fittings or furniture pieces currently in vogue. The result is a dramatic space, both elementary and enduring.

Furniture: Custom, Maletti. Lighting: Vipp (LAD). Finishes: Dibond, Dulux, Laminex. Fittings & Fixtures: Custom, Kvadrat, Zip.

Photography: Christopher Frederick Jones, Jason Starr