Indo Projects: Window Couture Spicing up the Storefront

Architizer News

Indo Projects: Window Couture Spicing up the Storefront

January 9, 2012

Photos: JWiley Photography

With the holidays over, it may prove a bit difficult getting back into the work groove after a week of relaxation and copious amounts of blog browsing and sugar cookies alike. Call it post-holiday syndrome. A great way to reminisce about the most wonderful time of the year is that quintessential holiday treat, the window display.

Granted, these windows by Indo aren’t holiday-themed, but they manage to capture the magic that makes window shopping one of the season’s great (and free) thrills: grand paper assemblages of playfully geometric patterns and solids that inhabit the liminal space between street and interior. Operating by the simple credo. “We dress windows,” Indo founders Linsey Burritt and Crystal Grover, who joined forces in 2007, create wholly unique, environmentally-conscience window treatments. Using found objects, store products and a dash of whimsy, they make displays that both work with and help further the client’s brand while cultivating new zones of spectacle for their own sake.

After the jump, we have a brief interview with the designers and a series of photos showcasing their unique work.

Make Believe Styrofoam Cup installation

Indo Office

What drew you to developing window displays and site-specific installations?

Window display began as an escape from what we were doing professionally at the time, and unfolded organically over the course of 3 years. Our first display was for Niche in Wicker Park, a shoe store who let anyone submit a proposal for their windows.

You could say after working with Niche it became an obsession.

Early Thaw of the Northwest Passage

Is prototyping an important aspect of the design process?

We work in 5 phases: concept, concept development, fabrication, installation and de-installation.

The materials we use, how we source them, where they go when we are done with them are all things we think about throughout the entire process. We may come up with a concept that we sketch out to be very soft and organic, but it may grow into something sharp and geometric. We pride ourselves on leaving room for discovery even when we installing, so there is a level of trust and openness we need to be able to do our work well.

The Coop – collaborative work space; photo: Sam Rosen

Since most of your work is hands on, how do you work to achieve the final outcome of most projects?

You discover what you can do with a material when you start manipulating it by hand. Our studio is pretty minimal so we have relied on doing everything with basic tools like scissors, exacto knifes, sand paper etc.