Walking down the vintage commercial strip of Lyons, Nebraska, it looks like any other building with shop windows and a front door, sharing walls with neighboring structures, but that’s all a disguise.

In fact, the disguise predates this creative conversion — when artist Matthew Mazzotta came to town, the lot behind the front wall was empty, making it a perfect place to create something new. Now, however, hydraulic cylinders on either side lower a series of platforms with bench seating over the sidewalk and facing into the low-traffic street, turning the town core into a public venue space.

Screens can be rolled in and performances accommodated on demand. “Both the seats and the screen retract and disappear when not in use, giving the impression that there is nothing unusual in this town, leaving only word-of-mouth accounts for inquiring visitors” explains the designer. The goal is to inject some life into a small town of just under 1,000 people, creating reasons for locals to gather and others to visit.

Residents donated time and money to create the project, and sponsored an area filmmaker to document the process. The Storefront Theater now hosts video game nights, movie screenings and musical guests.  “The new energy that the venue has brought to Main Street has also inspired another Lyons native to purchase the empty building right next to the theatre, and turn into an art gallery that had its first show in December and is booked with a different show for the next six months.”

There is nothing like a good mystery to draw people in, but adapting that maxim in an architectural context flies in the face of convention, making this barely-open-box building all the more effective in how it employs the element of surprise.

While closing people off to what is for sale may seem antithetical to showcasing wares. At the same time, that is precisely the paradox Herzog & De Meuron’s latest storefront for a fashionable chain of Japanese boutiques uses to its advantage.

This new shop for Miu Miu, intended to be its flagship operation, works on both fronts, playing on our desire to unbox from outside while creating an intimate interior space within.

While the outside is polished and minimalist, like the case of some fresh new smartphone, the inside is set up as much like a living room as a store, encouraging people to browse, linger, sit and lounge among the various items for sale. Mannequins are set up as participants and exemplars, themselves sitting on the seats or floors, or leaning against racks in the store.

“The typological model that best suited these considerations and specifications was a box placed directly at the level of the street, its cover slightly open to mark the entrance and allow pedestrians to look inside,” explain the architects. “Only then do they realize that the building is a shop. Here, under the oversized canopy, the two-storey interior is visible at a single glance, as if the volume had been sliced open with a big knife, turning the inside out.”

“The rounded, soft edges of the copper surfaces inside meet with the razor-sharp steel corners on the outside of the metal box, while the cave-like niches clad in brocade face the central space of the shop like loges in a theater. The shop on two tall storeys not only presents enticing goods on tables and in display cases; it is also like a spacious and comfortable home with inviting sofas and armchairs.”

Offering more than a traditional storefront space or conventional shopping website could individually, this hybrid showroom allows shoppers to experiment with different combinations of furnishings and fixtures both physically and virtually.

Created by London studio Bureau de Change for Made.com, the space is designed with a series of screens as backdrops for various sets of staged furniture and fixtures, allowing accessory items to be projected alongside for shoppers to compare and evaluate in relation to physically-present pieces.

“The projections provide a true, adaptable representation of the products, at the right scale, in the right place. Without them, the room sets feel unfinished, so for us they were the missing link to achieving a flexibility you can normally only achieve online,” say the designers.

Again bridging the physical and digital, various displays have sample swatches that can be taken by would-be buyers but others also have tablets that will let people peruse related items or rearrange potential settings.

Like a gallery or work of installation art, the idea was to create something interactive that also made maximum use of limited and very expense London commercial real estate, drawing people in, serving a function but also engaging them beyond their past or expected shopping experiences.

“This is such a bustling street, with so many stores vying for your attention, we wanted to produce something unexpected – an idea that would set it apart from the traditional format of lots of products in a display. The space was designed on a tight budget and timeframe but [the designers] brought a lot of ingenuity and flair and turned an old rundown bookstore into a crisp, spacious and inviting design for our customers”

While its creators anticipated this stretched plastic surface appealing to local graffiti artists, they were apparently hoping for a higher grade of street art to adorn the Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery facade in New York City.

Architecture studio SO-IL created this temporary surface as an extension of an exhibition going on within the gallery space, but its creators remain somewhat disappointed: “We knew this would happen. Unrestrained, Storefront pushes itself into the public domain. By wrapping it in a white canvas it further provokes a response from the city. It was anticipated, but what a poor quality of the graffiti… We had hoped for something better.”

So far, tags like “ugly kids” and other scrawled messages have been mainly black spray on the white background – nothing layered or time-consuming. Of course, now that the memo is out, perhaps a different kind of artist will take a try at the surface – that, or the statements may backfire, with artists wondering why they should add value to someone else’s surface.

Illuminated and pressed outward by walls and objects from within the gallery, part of the idea was to draw people into the exhibit by creating visual interest along the street and sidewalk – a novel trick for attracting attention. Still, if this kind of impromptu artistic addition was expected, why not simply invite a group of graffiti artists to contribute in the first place? In the end, once one concedes a surface will be defaced, either it will unfold naturally and unpredictably or will have to be controlled by the property owners – there is no real middle ground.

Martinize THIS! Factors such as cost, convenience and the creeping casualness of modern life have condemned countless dry cleaners to in-solvent-cy.

Triple A to ZZZzzz….

(image via: Abandoned Baton Rouge)

How do you know a dry cleaning business has been around a LONG time? Well, one clue is when its name begins with “AAA” to get it listed on the front page of the Yellow Pages directory. Another is the presence of funky fab fifties (AAA opened back in ’57) flying buttress architecture fronting the facility.

(images via: Abandoned Baton Rouge)

According to the folks behind Abandoned Baton Rouge, “AAA Cleaners is another place with that Night of the Comet feel… as if people just vaporized, leaving their everyday items.” Vaporized or Martinized, interior shots of Triple A Cleaners hint at something not quite right at the longstanding Louisiana landmark though there are no clues at press time. We said “press” time, heh.

Unwell In Wellington

(image via: Eye Of The Fish)

Got no time for One Hour Martinizing? Then get your act to Wellington, New Zealand where the 55’MIN’ dry cleaners will have your formal duds delightfully decontaminated in under an hour. What’s that you say? The store on Wellington’s historic Cuba Street was officially declared to be an Earthquake Prone Building in 2011 and as such was forced to close? Consider it a Tacastrophe! Kudos to Eye Of The Fish for the brilliantly bilious image above.

Cleaned & Died

(images via: Geography of Empty Spaces)

Before the advent of non-toxic Martinizing in 1949, dangerously flammable solvents were used in the dry cleaning process. Due to the nature of the chemicals used, cleaning was usually done off-site and typical turnaround times were measured in days. Usually, but not always: the former Slater-White Cleaners in San Antonio, Texas houses a host of stained and rusting tanks on the premises that may or may not still contain toxic solvents.

(image via: Geography of Empty Spaces)

Full props to Geography of Empty Spaces for documenting the current (as of October 2010) status of Slater-White Cleaners, which happens to be abandoned and deteriorating. This is bad news for Obama, er, the elementary school located just across the street.

You Got It, Pontiac

(images via: SeeClickFix)

And by “it”, we mean a dry cleaning shop abandoned so long the street numbers have fallen off the outside walls along with most of the paint. Several concerned citizens (yes, there are still a few) have posted photos of the decrepit and now doorless cleaners to SeeClickFix in the hope that Pontiac authorities will see and subsequently fix it. Judging by the shop’s obvious state of advanced decay, however, this is one dry cleaners that’s been taken to the cleaners… and won’t be coming back.

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The Way We Wore 12 Clothesed Abandoned Dry Cleaners