Precedents and The Like - REI

"The Great Indoors", Interior Sources, Sept 2008, Vol 17 No. 7
A Photo Essay about Gensler's unique design for an REI retail store

Gensler's took the opportunity in it's interior design of the new Boulder, Co REI store to reflect the company's commitment to sustainability and love for nature - inspiring customers to outfit their next great adventure. I really like this case study because the images of the interiors actually illustrate how a concept can guide the layout of a retail space. The photograph with the midfloor fixtures features a prime example. The fixtures are all substantially sized, typically two-sided so products can be displayed on both the front and the back, encouraging people to walk around them. If you look at the path created by the floor fixtures it is much like that of a nature trail, gently winding about a fixed obstacle like a large tree or boulder. In the same way, customers can slow down, wind about the store and look more intently at the product, browse through the racks, and really be immersed in the store.

Here the "linger factor" is key. There are level changes and natural lighting and information areas - an abundance of information to help educate as well as inspire. The graphics in the space are used wisely. Large black and white panaoramic photos are broken into panels and placed in the clothing areas where the compartmentalized overhead shelving would be - drawing the eye upward to the items in those shelves as well as creating inspiring vistas.

Unlike the Sincere retail locations, daylighting here is necessary to the whole atmosphere of the store.  Light wells and skylights bring in daylighting at the same time as cutting down on energy consumption and photovoltaic capture solar power for reuse.

There is a whole forest of two-dimensional trees that surround you, serving as screens between rooms, wall art, and sculptural doors and entryways.  An abtsracted motif appears in patinaed steel - a warm, earthy color.  Those same trees occur in three dimensions as background or context in the manequin stands. In another place, more photo-realistic trees are etched into the glass. In the front entrance two mamoth abstract "tree trunks" span from floor to ceiling, far overhead.  They are impressive and beautiful and make a statement about what is about to come as soon as you enter the store.

As far as I can tell, there isn't any color on the walls. None.  Yet the place is vibrant with pattern and texture, and the fixtures themselves are honey-colored woods and the product creates an overall color scheme- or atleast a rainbow of options.  Product is grouped presumably according to male, female, function, style, and then color, and size.  This creates a natural order yet a few small signs built into the cases might provide more info, but they are minimal at best. 

Precedents and The Like - SWATCH

The Swatch store in times Square is just an over the top example of some very effective branding.  The store is wrapped in literally wrapped in images.  I chose this store because I've actually been there.  It's very pop.  I think that could be the design concept in a nutshell.  Products pop in the displays, graphics pop off of walls, colors and light pop from the inside to the outside.

The windows are also used very effectively; cases in the interior are encased in bright colors that draw your attention fromthe outside.

It's very urban and international in its feel.  The people in the ads are young hipsters, well dressed and - in their latest ads- actually in flight.  The whole facade soars to the sky and manages to compete fairly well with the other eye popping billboards around it.

From the Moodie Report on Swatch ---> Read More
Swatch + Art
Right from the start, Swatch connected with contemporary art. Swatch watches were inspired by popular culture, and Swatch itself soon became a canvas for famous artists, musicians and fashion designers. One of the first major artists to collaborate with Swatch was the Keith Haring, and the relationship between Swatch and art has since produced a fascinating series of Swatch Art Specials by Pedro Almodóvar, Ágatha Ruíz de la Prada, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Vivienne Westwood, among many others. Recent collaborators include the performance artists and musicians known as Blue Man Group, and Norma Jeane, the contemporary artist who designed Once Again, Again, the 2008 “Club Watch” for members of the worldwide community of Swatch fans and collectors known as Swatch The Club.

Creative retail
Swatch The Club has evolved from a club for enthusiasts and collectors of Swatch watches to a worldwide community. Today, with more than 12,000 Swatch POS, creative retail is the name of the game. In addition to existing shop-in-shops, kiosks, monobrand Swatch stores and flagship Swatch Jellyfish stores, Swatch now sets up “Instant Stores” — temporary Swatch stores that can be set up quickly at an event or in a trendy new location. A new look in retail outlets is coming soon – a theatrical display of creative mobility designed to turn Swatch stores into stages for the product as protagonist.

Precedents and The Like - L'Eclaireur

L'ecalireur, Le Marias, Rue Mahler, Paris

Very French and Very Experiemental.

I love this designer, the store and the brand. It's cool and eclectic. There's a bit of the Romantic ideal of the globe-trotting, treasure-hunting Indiana Jonesesque lifestyle in the artifacts that are positioned throughout the store. It's dark, mysterious and sexy - again, very French. We get a glimpse of where Anthropologie might have gotten their french-vintage-cabinet-of-curiosities-aesthetic.

The tones in many of hte spaces are warm. There's an ample use of leather and animal skins, glass, steel, and stone. The space relies heavily on monumental architectural details drawn directly from the Parisian cityscape. Skylights in a central room create a cool contrast to the surrounding rooms and draw the eye toward the center of the room. This room has a distinctly different feel and is pared down to shelving, manequins, mid-floor displays where clothes lie stacked ona flat surface. There is one long hanging rack and a modern shelving unit made of reclaimed wood. The room is largely a passageway from one wing of the store to the other so the center of the room is kept as a wide-open aisle. Again, the lighting in this room serves as a good model for how to work with artificial and natural light together in one space. Track lights cut through the natural light flooding through the skylight and still cast hot spots on hanging garments. This, along with the inclusion of a large spot light on a tripod give this room the impression of a movie set.




A video tour around L'Eclaireur, Paris

Precedents and The Like - APRIL 77

Aprill 77 Flagship Store 49 Rue de Saintonge, Paris

April 77 guy.

April 77 - begs the question, "Are we a clothing brand or a music label?"

We are both. Our clothing is music, and music lives on our clothing.

April 77 is a store based in Paris. They are part clothier and part record label, attempting to outfit the 20-30yr old music afficianado, educated and edgy, laid back, subversively vain. Their musical tastes are both phono and stereo- just like their fashion - backward and forward.

Their latest collection is called "We Lived Our Lives in Black."
I love the way they write about their collection. "Influenced by suburban England, Scottland and even Ireland in the 1980s, early 1990s, the soundtrack to this collection is Shoegaze, Britpop, Dreampop, made by isolationist teenagers and working class youth torn by religious and political conflicts. The Scottish band Jesus and Mary Chain and their improbable look are major influeneces in this collection with their aesthetic and sounds that mix pop music, Bat Cave and New Wave with practically nothing, rendering it both superpowerful and minimalist."

They have a pretty cool trench coat called The Fiction.

"Drip, drop. And we're not talking about coffee or pee.

We're not sure what the weather is like where you are this time of year, but if you're in Paris or London, it's probably well,

raining.

The Cure for all this is in The Fiction."

The flagship store in Paris is rich and minimal and all artificially lit. Lighting consists of spotlighting hanging clothes, powerful pin lights highlighting product on shelves and neon tube lighting referencing the discotech.

The walls and shelving are all brown, but the walls contrast one another: the flat brown paint absorbs light while the burled walnut shelving is highly polished (maybe even a printed laminate) which bounces back a powerful sheen as does the chrome hanging racks and a mirrored mid floor fixture.

The layout is minimal. The store revolves around a cylindrical center room with center geometrical arch made of a mirrored lintel with compartmentalized shelved in the posts. Shirts sit in stacks below and are lit with pin lights. The perimeter of the room is lined in shelves and racks placed at various heights. Many of the shelves are empty, accentuating its negative presence. In other cases a single shirt sits on a shelf. Clothes hung or in shelves around the perimeter are mostly black and white with some punches of color while those under the center arch provide the main color in the room.

Black and white clothes are punctuated with a punch of color, for example, a red bandana.

One large mid-floor fixture is a large shiny, metal cylinder topped with a flat cylindrical soffit housing pin lights that light the round rack below that houses only 5 seperately hung shirts. The shirts all hang well above eye level where you can walk beneath them. Next to this display is a set of semicircular shelves rounding the entrance to the room. On these rest candy colored and tortoiseshell Ray-Bans- one per shelf - Like eyes that peek out from dark corners. Even I am reminded of that 1980s Rockwell hit, Somebody's Watching Me.

A Pioneer stereo system rests on one shelf - a throw back to the 60s and 70s. My parents had one just like it. High-fi, a coveted collector's item- the family's fighting over it as I speak. Clad in beautiful wood veneer, you get a glimpse into the inspiration for the the whole store.

It's high-style London meets black vinyl. The brand comes across loud and clear.

Clark Kent, Dick Tracy, Annie Hall. They all knew what was up.

Messenger

Messenger

is a shop that carries a wide variety of messenger bags, portfolios, briefcases, laptop bags and other essentials for the creative professional. There is an option of custom printing or embossing one's monogram or original art onto the bag with an on-the-spot printing process. The idea is to create one-of-a-kind pieces not a whole run of marketing swag.

Possible items you might find in the store include:












This would be a new concept for Greensboro and would cater to the professional with a bit of expendable income. Having the ability to emboss, engrave or color print can yield a variety of looks for a variety of clientel. The look can be hip-hop or high-fashion. The branding of the store will largely determine the overall slant and is still to be explored...