This Inflated Steel Installation Sets The Tone Of Zucca’s Osaka Store

For Zucca’s Osaka boutique by Moment, an installation of inflated steel captures the essence of the Japanese edgy yet tailored clothing brand

Behind-the-Design of Zucca’s Osaka Store

• 10 craftspeople led by Moment cofounder Hisaaki Hirawata
• fourteen inflated steel modules
• 145 PSI air pressure
• 34 pounds module weight
• 1.5 months of mock-up testing
• one month to produce modules

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For the Osaka store of Japanese fashion and accessories label Zucca, Moment celebrated the company’s respect for materiality and process with a wall installation of a series of pressurized air–filled recycled-steel modules, first tested with panels in a 4-by-8-foot size.

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Each module is composed of two 0.8-millimeter-thick steel sheets welded together to form an airtight envelope, its dimensions ultimately changing to 4 feet square, which yielded a more puffed-up, pouchlike result.

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One by One metalworkers inflated mock-ups inside an enclosed box, in case the modules burst, introducing air via a custom gauge through a small opening in the middle of the panels.

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Other tests tried water instead of air, injecting it through an inlet with a water gun, however the pressure proved inadequate to achieve the desired expansion.

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Each of the finished modules, shown completed and prior to installation on-site, have unique distortions.

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At Zucca’s Osaka shop, Moment considered mounting the steel modules in different orientations so the dents would appear random before ultimately deciding that could pull focus from the clothing and settling on a more orderly arrangement.

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The indentations themselves were not planned but a spontaneous—albeit relatively consistent—result of the process, “bringing both surprise and tension,” Hirawata notes.

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The modules span most of the 670-square-foot store’s expansive sidewall.