Hem Pop Up, London

Primarily an online brand, Berlin-based furniture and accessories company Hem is making a foray into retail with a pop-up in London’s highly trafficked Earlham Street, Covent Garden.

Hem aims to make beautiful design accessible, courting a new generation of design-lovers with objects that are configurable, fun to explore and affordable, and the pop-up delivers.

With its polished concrete flooring, stark walls and untreated wood displays, it has a stripped back, gallery-like aesthetic – one that makes artefacts of the hand-picked collection of products on display while offering a window into their creation.

I-Am has created a stripped-back, interactive gallery-style pop-up to quirkily introduce Berlin’s Hem to London.

An installation of wooden birds hangs in the front window, enticing customers to explore the selective assortment of objects and furniture inside. Bright pops of colour and track lighting guide customers through the two-storey setting, which features ‘exhibits’ of products accompanied by touch-screen devices offering customisation options along with a material library of fabrics and finishes. Featured products are also accompanied by informative videos that take customers through the inspiration and design process behind them.

Simple and intriguing signage exhorts customers to take material samples home or engage with products. In the case of brand’s showcase mix-and-matchable AlphaBeta lamp, they’re asked to visualise its more than 10 billion possible design outcomes.

The experience is one of investigation, participation and even product creation, with customers coming away with a delightfully colourful, eye-catching design that probability says is like nothing else out there.