OVE'S ROCK N' LOCK
LOCATION
MALMÖ, SWEDEN
STATUS
COMPLETED
YEAR
1987
SIZE
300 m2
PROGRAM
HAIR SALON & SHOP
PHOTO
BJÖRN BLIXT
Ove’s Rock n' Lock is a combined hairdresser’s and a shop, located in Old Town Malmö. The design is characterised by a strong sense of scenography, an exaltation of the fantastical, and the extensive use of glass facades to allow for an exchange between the outside and the feeling of being in a giant aquarium. It is a spatial design in iron, concrete, stainless steel, brass, mirrors and neon lights. We have used a lot of geometric forms many of which are skewed, inclined stainless steel columns, railings and an iron floor as a ritual altar which questions conventional perception.
There are two main entrances, one to the left to the hairdresser’s and the other to the right, to the shop. Both spaces are connected in the interior through the stainless steel conical column. In the hairdresser’s there is an enormous mirror wall in front of which olympic brass vases are sustained by zig-zagging stainless steel tubes on top of three concrete orbs.
The main mirror wall reflects the iron wall in front of it and the inclind altar floor by a partial temple facade. The floor goes up and finishes off in the two main iron columns: the changing rooms. This facade is the entrance to the small metallic room, and behind these conical columns you enter the showroom...
The design of Ove’s Rock n' Lock may be synthesised as follows:
“... It is in fact the “House of Fantasy”, for it is just an ephemeral building, a shelter for poetic feelings. It is also the “House of Emptiness”, for it is free of all ornament, except for what little is necessary to satisfy the aesthetic aspiration of the moment. Finally, it is the “House of Asymmetry”, in that it is destined for the cult of the incomplete, and some small detail is always left unfinished, so that it may be completed by the play of the imagination…”
Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea