Wilson Brothers and Brinkworth were commissioned to design Foot Patrol, London’s best-known destination sneaker store.

Based on London’s Berwick Street, the store’s understated façade is simply a prelude to what has been achieved architecturally within. A ‘second’ shop, complete with pitched roof, has been constructed to float within the store shell, assembled from an urban palette of recycled scaffold board for the floors, walls and ceiling, teamed with satin black steel for the fixturing.

A fully-mirrored end wall accentuates the intimate scale of the ‘inner’ store, playfully reflecting the linearity of the design as an optical illusion, that appears to extend the store rearwards as an infinite space. Clever concealment of lighting and services, behind the pitched roof cladding, allows for a unique, sliding ‘library-style’ product display system, which can be extended along the whole length of the store, or nested at either end to leave space for special events or promotions.

This blend of modularity and function, offset with an aged vintage backdrop, creates the perfect stage for the final detail. The original, revered Foot Patrol gas mask logo, housed within an aged metal frame and rendered in white neon, meets customers as they enter the store through the ‘transition’ space, the antechamber where the outer and inner stores meet.

Foot Patrol, 80 Berwick Street, London, W1.

Photography courtesy of Foot Patrol
FP Gas mask neon photo by Louise Melchior