Cotemp's first permanent shop sits inside an existing building on a Shanghai side street, where ONOAA STUDIO treats Conceived by Cotemp as a small iron box, opened at the door and left to gather traces of time.
The starting point for Conceived by Cotemp was an object rather than a plan: a small iron box. It is the kind of ordinary thing that gathers the marks of time on its surface while keeping whatever is valued shut inside, and ONOAA STUDIO built the shop for the fashion label Cotemp out of that single image. A rusted iron canopy folds out from pale mineral-rendered walls, giving the building the presence of something kept half out of sight. Stepping through the door becomes, in effect, the act of opening the box.
Rather than gut the space and fit it out as a standard retail interior, the studio held to a principle it calls "no over-construction". The intervention stays deliberately short of finishing everything. Old and new sit next to each other in plain view, the done beside the undone.
Reclaimed furniture is adapted into display pieces, small stools are built from salvaged timber, and surplus fabric from Cotemp's own production is put back to use. Locally sourced stone is laid by hand, while handmade brick forms the wardrobes, benches, fitting rooms and jewellery displays. Their slight irregularities are retained, held as evidence of the processes and the hands that shaped them.
At the centre, a raw steel staircase ties the two floors together. Its structure is left exposed, and the metal is allowed to oxidise on its own beneath a transparent protective coat. Like the canopy outside, it is not meant to hold still. It will go on collecting marks as people climb it, so that wear becomes a record of use rather than a fault to be corrected.
These are less gestures toward an unfinished look than questions about how much actually needs adding in the first place. Strip back the surplus construction and processing, ONOAA argues, and the materials carry more of the expression themselves. So the shop is not fixed as a single picture. Like the clothes and objects it holds, it is meant to be lived with, touched and slowly changed, its ageing folded into its ongoing life. Hidden, then found, the little iron box stays open to whatever comes next.
