Some Thoughts Clamps Felt and Metal Together to Build a Modular Eyewear Store in Wuhan

Eyewear retail is a strange typology. The product is small, reflective and nearly identical from one frame to the next, so the store usually leans on lighting, mirrors and a tidy grid of shelves. In Wuhan, Some Thoughts, led by architect Li Jingze, took a less polite route for the MOLSION Concept Store. Across 98 m² for client Xiamen Aiyirui Optical Co., the studio built almost every display, column and counter from two materials that rarely share a sentence: felt and metal.

What makes the project worth your time is not the colour, though the saturated red is hard to ignore. It is the joint. Felt is treated as a modular block, stacked and pressed together by custom triangular fasteners, so the connection is the ornament and the construction logic is visible at arm's length. The stated aim is a symbiosis: metal loses some of its coldness, and felt gains a sculptural, load-bearing presence it rarely gets in interiors. We think the store mostly delivers on that claim, and the places where it does not are instructive too.

A Bright Ceiling Over a Field of Red Objects

The entrance sets the rules quickly. A backlit white ceiling grid floods the room with even light, the floor is glossy, and the furniture reads as a set of freestanding red and grey objects rather than built-in joinery. A cylindrical red tower and a fan-folded counter pull you in before you register a single pair of glasses.

That flat, luminous ceiling is a deliberate foil. With so much tactile material at eye level, the overhead plane stays neutral, almost clinical, which lets the felt pieces read as solid masses instead of soft furnishings.

The Curved Wall as a Stack of Boxes

The most photographed element is the curved display wall, built from stacked red felt boxes with chrome clasps and glass shelves slotted between them. Against terracotta-toned walls it reads almost like masonry, a coursed wall laid in an unexpected material.

The curve matters. A modular block system invites straight runs, and bending it shows that the units can be rotated and offset to follow a plan rather than dictate one. The store's irregular footprint, visible in the drawings, would have been awkward to fill with a rigid shelving grid.

The Fastener Is the Detail

Get close and the project becomes a lesson in connections. Felt panels are pressed together by metal brackets bolted through the stack, and in some corners clear clamps take the place of steel so the felt edge stays visible. The compression is legible: you can see the material bunch slightly where it is held.

This is where the felt-and-metal argument is strongest. The metal does not frame the felt or hide behind it; it squeezes it. That small act of clamping makes the soft material look structural and makes the hard material look like a tool rather than a finish.

Columns Built from Modules

The same logic scales up into columns. Red and grey felt panels stack vertically, clamped at intervals, with glass-topped shelves carrying sunglasses between the courses. A grey felt-clad column with chrome fittings stands beside a pleated red tray that cantilevers from a box wall, and the two colours start to sort the room into zones.

Rows of red felt stands across the floor push the idea further. Repetition is what a modular kit is for, and here it gives the store a rhythm without resorting to identical wall bays.

Cantilevers and Stone Bases

Several pieces push the felt into cantilever. A red felt table reaches out from a black stone base toward angled glasses shelves, and a polished steel cylinder crosses red display tops like a rail. The stone grounds the composition and gives the eye something heavy to set against the soft mass above.

Whether the felt is doing real structural work or wrapping a hidden armature is not something the published material explains. Either way, the visual effect is of a soft material asked to behave like a beam, and that tension is the point.

Grey Felt for the Serious Counters

Where customers sit and transact, the palette cools to grey. A grey felt counter with a glass top and pull-out eyeglass trays sits beneath an illuminated sign on a textured copper-brown wall. Nearby, felt-lined shelves, chrome brackets and a black marble round table display frames at close range.

The shift in colour is a quiet piece of wayfinding. Red is for browsing and spectacle; grey is for fitting, consulting and paying. It is a sensible way to use one material system for two very different retail moments.

Metal Takes the Lead Along the Walls

Not everything is felt. Brushed steel drawers slide open to reveal tilted white trays, and an aisle of steel wall shelves leads toward the red stands and a warm back wall. Curved shelves project from a red felt wall held by steel clamps, with a mirror doubling the scene.

These perimeter zones are where the balance tips toward metal, and they are also the most conventional parts of the store. Storage needs precision and repetition, and steel is better at both. The contrast actually sharpens the felt pieces in the middle of the room.

Burl Wood and the Brand Wall

A third material slips in at the back: a burl wood veneer wall carrying felt shelves on steel brackets and a glowing mirrored logo. It adds warmth and a figured grain that the flat felt surfaces lack.

We would argue it is one material too many. The felt-and-metal pairing is clear enough to carry the store, and the burl, along with the portrait light boxes, nudges the interior back toward familiar luxury retail cues. It is a minor dilution, not a failure.

Plans and Drawings

The exploded axonometric separates ceiling, furniture and floor into layers, which is the clearest way to read the project: a neutral shell with a kit of freestanding objects dropped into it. The plan shows an angular, irregular footprint organised into numbered zones for cashier, negotiation area, curved cabinet and wall racks.

The sections and details are worth studying. A double-layer cabinet, wall racks, a spiral rack, a negotiation table and a column rack are each drawn as discrete pieces, confirming that the store is designed as furniture assemblies rather than as fixed architecture.

Why This Project Matters

Small retail interiors are usually where materials get applied, not explored. MOLSION Concept Store treats a 98 m² shop as a place to test a construction idea: that a soft, modular material can be stacked, clamped and cantilevered into furniture with real presence, and that the fastener can be the main design move rather than a hidden necessity.

For designers working on retail, the lesson is about committing to a system. Once Some Thoughts defined the felt module and its triangular fastener, the curved wall, the columns, the counters and the stands all followed from it. The moments where the project borrows other luxury cues are the least convincing. The moments where it trusts the felt and the clamp are the reason to remember it.

MOLSION Concept Store by Some Thoughts (lead architect Li Jingze), Wuhan, China. 98 m². Completed 2024. Photography by SFAP.

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