Danish design studio Spacon & X has carved a cave out of cardboard and installed a bare tree in the Lynk & Co car showroom in Düsseldorf, Germany.
The studio aimed for the 400-square-metre space to have more of an impact than the cars on show.
"The overall design is in intentional contrast to your average car dealership, with the spatial design as a louder experience than the actual product – the car," Spacon & X founding partner Svend Jacob Pedersen told Dezeen.
"The spatial design is hyper-eclectic, with a new immersive spatial experience waiting to ambush you around each corner."
Lynk & Co describes its showrooms as "clubs" from which members can buy, lease or borrow a car, and the Düsseldorf space was designed not to look like a traditional showroom from the exterior.
Instead, purple lights, clothes on hangers and a corner with a colourful sofa makes the car dealership resemble a lifestyle store.
Once inside, customers are met by an unusual, cave-like space.
"The cave space is made of multiple plys of laser-cut sheets of cardboard," Pedersen said.
One car is always on display inside the dealership. This sits next to the cardboard cave, and is partly hidden behind a light chain curtain.
Spacon & X worked with multiple different materials, including bare wood and aluminium, to create the Lynk & Co space.
"With the very eclectic direction of the space, a wide palette of materials have been brought into play," Pedersen explained.
"To highlight a few – cardboard has been used for the cave, to create an unexpected balance between the immersive and organic expression of the cave and a very familiar, inexpensive material like cardboard," he added.
"We have used aluminium chain curtains to create a light transparent frame around the car on display."
The studio also created an organic feel for the Lynk & Co meeting room, which has an all-wood interior with a pale tree at its centre.
"Another material to highlight is the all-raw pine meeting room with an actual tree stripped of the bark, underlining our appreciation of raw untreated materiality," Pedersen said.
For the main space, Spacon & X designed a "melting" corner, with a streetlight that has bent over and chairs that appear to float into a puddle on the floor.
The showroom's "disco" bathroom has a bright-red colour palette with an op-art style black-and-white patterned floor that resembles an interior in a David Lynch film, while a fitting room has been filled with large gold baubles that appear to sprout from a wall.
"Our spatial expression creates a tapestry of diverse scenarios within the Düsseldorf store, from serene conversations to otherworldly caves," the studio said.
"We seamlessly blend contrasting elements, from warm wooden meeting rooms to rough concrete displays, and from melting furniture lounges to dazzling champagne fitting rooms."
Spacon & X has previously designed the interior for restaurant Noma's burger spinoff POPL and created a kiosk-like design library for its own Copenhagen HQ.
The photography is courtesy of Lynk & Co.