soda.BERLIN Bookstore by Designliga

soda.BERLIN Bookstore by Designliga | Yellowtrace

The interior of soda.BERLIN, a bookshop for visual culture in the heart of Berlin, was the brainchild of Designliga, Munich-based bureau for visual communication and interior design. After soda.MÜNCHEN, Sebastian Steinacker opened the second branch of soda in early January 2015, offering a range of books and magazines from all areas of fashion, photography, architecture and design. Inspired by a visually rich environment of bookshops and libraries, Steinacker discovered a deep-rooted passion for print media. soda embodies visual culture and freedom of inspiration, with bookshelves displaying book covers, not spines, arranged like artworks in a gallery.

Foreground and background, space and interior design blend into one as the dominant design principle. The core idea is to streamline the variety of elements in the store by blanketing them in a neutral colour palette, then add graphic texture to further smooth out the distinctions between the furnishings and their surrounding structures. This approach created a space with a minimalist, clear atmosphere, despite the quantity of objects and the extensive display areas necessary for them.

The space and the objects it contains thus blend into a single whole, an effect which is heightened by the abstract pattern which extends over parts of the walls, shelves, ceiling and floor. These “scribbles” have a random, incidental air despite their clearly graphic origins, releasing the areas they cover from their usual significance. The pattern flows and overlaps from fixed to variable elements, eliminating the distinction between the space and its furnishings and blurring the various levels into a diffuse whole. The glowing publication covers form the focus of attention, a vivid contrast to the minimalist background.