PREVIEW Frame #142 SEP/OCT by Frame

THE NEXT SPACE ISSUE 142 SEP — OCT 2021

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HYBRID WORK WUTOPIA LAB SELF-COOLING SPACE ALGAE ARCHITECTURE

RENOVATION RENAISSANCE

CONTENTS Olivier Hero

14 REPORTING Venice and Mumbai

FROM

19 BUSINESS OF DESIGN From China’s domestic rebound

in hotel design to the revival of microbusinesses in commercial centres

NAARO

55 31

IN PRACTICE

32 INTRODUCING Montreal-based design practice Ivy Studio

40 WHAT I’VE LEARNED Wutopia Lab founder Yu Ting 47 THE CLIENT Hitoshi Tanaka, CEO of

Japanese eyewear brand Jins Alex Lesage

55 INFLUENCER EcoLogicStudio’s Claudia

Pasquero and Marco Poletto Frame 142

Inna Kablukova, courtesy of Eremchuk and Pititskaya

65 SPACES Adaptive reuse in action,

workplaces double as bars, photo studios and more

116 ROCA Ultimate hygiene meets innovative technology

119 RETAIL LAB 120 How hospitality is reinvigorating retail

138 What’s next for

retailtainment?

120 Courtesy of Crosby Studios

Alex, courtesy of Xu Studio

149 MARKET Mawa’s technical lighting, plus 160 IN NUMBERS Snøhetta and Saferock’s geopolymer concrete in facts and figures

154 Contents

Courtesy of Supertoys Supertoys

the winners of Design Parade

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SHOP AND What’s the purpose of brick-and-mortar stores? The past year has made it clearer than ever that we don’t need to visit a store to buy things. We can shop at home, on the road and in the office. So why go to a store at all? For services that we can’t get at home, like advice, the opportunity to try on clothes or to have things repaired. But what role will stores play in a society that, according to researchers, is less and less about buying products and more and more about spending money on experiences? The simple answer: stores will have to offer experiences. Experiential retail is a term that’s been batted about for years. But the question is still what type of experience is relevant for retailers. First of all, it must be brand-specific, it has to say something about a retailer’s core values. In addition, it’s imperative that experiences mean something to consumers. A gimmick is fun, but it won’t stick. Retailers offering food and beverages, however, is a different matter: they’re meeting universal, timeless human needs. So it’s not surprising that hospitality-infused retail is currently taking off. After all, offering something like an espresso both extends a customer’s dwell time and goes beyond the purely transactional aspect of visiting a store. How far can dwell time be stretched? What other forms of hospitality can be meaningfully

linked to retail? And how can the intensity of an experience linked to hospitality be increased in a retail context? In this issue’s Lab, we explore what the possibilities are. I’d also like to take this opportunity to announce a new event that we’re launching in Eindhoven on 21 October: The Next Space. We’re bringing together experts from sectors such as mobility, food, games and material science to brainstorm new spatial concepts with designers, architects, real estate developers and brands. What impact do 3D food printers have on our kitchens? What does XR mean for retail and work? Will the metaverse change hospitality and wellness? At The Next Space, visitors will search for answers together. At Frame, we like to be at the forefront of spatial experimentation. The Next Space offers us and our community the ultimate opportunity to actively contribute to the development of new spatial concepts. And besides that, the event increases our community’s dwell time with the Frame brand . . . ;-)

Robert Thiemann Editor in chief

STAY 12

Editorial

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BUSINESS OF DESIGN

Physical experiences are craved more than ever before Facebook, Google and Apple’s office re-opening plans. Why China’s hotels are becoming more homely. How apps like Deliveroo and JustEat are challenging room service and in-hotel restaurants. Why the high street needs to embrace our side hustles.

SCHRAMM ORIGINS Quadro Handmade in Germany

schramm-werkstaetten.com

Either by necessity or a reframing of life goals, the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on entrepreneurship. Many lost their jobs, while others realized they’d rather not returns to roles that just weren’t fulfilling them. As a result, starting a new business, for many, became a key aspiration. According to data from Clearview Research’s Youth Employment 2030 report, 58 per cent of young adults in England said they would pursue entrepreneurship and 13 per cent have already started a side hustle since the beginning of the first lockdown. Meanwhile, a study run by members’ club Allbright found that one in four women are setting up their own business as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while three quarters of women (74 per cent) feel inspired to do so. This glut of entrepreneurship is evident in the fact that there were about 1.5 million new business applications in the US in the third quarter of 2020, a 77 per cent increase from Q2 and double any quarterly report from 2004 to 2017. In the UK, business incorporations have regularly been hitting double-digit growth rates since June 2020. While most of these businesses will have been born online-only due to circumstance, the opening up of towns and cities presents an opportunity to engage new audiences, especially with so much vacant real estate. That will require the help of landlords, however. One case study comes from shopping centre owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which is granting six businesses started during the pandemic window space in one of the UK’s largest retail arenas. Titled Side Hustle Heroes, the ventures cover fashion, homeware and beauty, a self-care subscription service and a sustainable paint company. The now-ubiquitous QR code is used as a vehicle to take passers-by

Courtesy of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield

How microbusinesses can revive commercial centres to each brand’s web shop. ‘With people craving physical experiences more so than ever before and 49 per cent of consumers wanting to buy more locally sourced products, we’re bringing these online brands offline into a physical space for the first time,’ says Harita Shah, marketing director UK at Unibail-RodamcoWestfield. Business network Enterprise Nation, in partnership with payment provider SumUp, has trialled a pop-up shop on Oxford Street (previously Europe’s busiest shopping avenue) to offer smaller brands a similarly direct route to market. Tenants can book in one to four days of trade, splitting the cost with two other complementary businesses. Digital signage makes the transition between brands seamless. Speaking to Enterprise Nation as part of its affiliated Hello World campaign, Becky Jones, head of partnerships at temporary-retail platform Appear Here, explained how adding such flexibility to commercial centres could ensure their long-term survival: ‘Higher vacancy rates aren’t always a bad thing. If done right, it’s an opportunity to redefine our cities and introduce a new generation of brands and entrepreneurs to our streets.’ PM

Shopping centre owner UnibailRodamco-Westfield granted six businesses started during the pandemic window space in one of the UK’s largest retail arenas.

Business of Design

IN PRACTICE

People should always sit at the heart of architecture Ivy Studio on counteracting Canada’s predominant palette. Wutopia Lab on enriching the ordinary through magic realism. Jins on redefining display design norms. EcoLogicStudio on learning from nature’s intricate systems.

IVY STU DIO INTRODUCING

Matters of Identity

The partners of Ivy Studio (left to right): David Kirouac, Guillaume B Riel, Gabrielle Rousseau and Philip Staszewski.

In designing the interiors of Montrealbased Middle Eastern tea salon and wine bar Shay, Ivy Studio opted for a mineral colour palette that’s inspired by the setting sun over the Syrian Desert.

Less than half a decade into the game, Montreal’s Ivy Studio has already amassed an extensive list of local clients, whose identities it helps to precisely define through material-driven, hyper-customized design.

Words Adrian Madlener Photos Alex Lesage

Montreal’s burgeoning design scene continues to garner international attention. A slew of autonomous craft-led makers and boutique brands have joined the city’s crop of groundbreaking architects who make strong statements with the city’s plethora of public spaces, restaurants, stores and offices. There’s an inherent appetite for the bold and unconventional. At the precipice of this movement is Ivy Studio. The collaborative practice was founded in 2018 by four young architects – David Kirouac, Guillaume B Riel, Gabrielle Rousseau and Philip Staszewski – looking to break out of jobs at traditional firms and develop an approach all of their own. They talk about designing retail concepts and workspaces that help companies define their image, the power of an uncompromised approach in a postCovid-19 world, and the agility that comes from running a small collaborative practice.

You’ve recently completed the Spacial co-working space, Vention office and Crisp barbershop, which all feature striking structural elements, textured materials and bright colours. How do you continuously create tailor-made concepts for each project? PHILIP STASZEWSKI: We follow our instinct and get inspired by everything we see around us. We’re not necessarily interested in developing timeless designs that follow a defined aesthetic, but want to create unique results. We want people to feel that they’re experiencing something new and to leave with a strong memory. We’re trying to counteract

the sober black, white and wood palette that is all too common in Canada and to use components that stick out. This is why our projects contain a lot of curves, colours and unusual materials. Yet, as architects, we know that structure and simplicity are also crucial. A defining factor that sets us apart from our competitors is our age. We’ve all just turned 30, and as one of the youngest practices in the city, we have yet to define routines or patterns. We see our relative naivety and hunger for experimentation as an advantage.

How does this flexibility play into your ability to work with different typologies: co-working spaces, gyms, stores and even barbershops?

GUILLAUME B RIEL: Our biggest fear as a team is that we might get typecast to a point where people begin to expect a specific style from us. Taking on a wide variety of projects keeps us on our toes. We’ve conceived restaurants, offices and a gym or two in the past, but not long enough to develop reflexes. Although we understand the basics that make a space function, we’re constantly learning new ways of designing them. The obvious challenge with this approach is the amount of additional work we need to do to understand the specific needs of each new commission. In this respect, maintaining a close collaboration with the client is crucial. There is always the potential of unintentionally creating a new typology. With the Spacial co-working office, we conceived a workspace that resembles a café. The

Introducing

function is almost identical. We can take the essence of one typology and transmit it to another. This flexibility also lets us be more responsive to changing behaviours and trends. Overall, it’s a riskier way of working but it’s the only way we stay engaged in the medium and draw in new clients.

What were the challenges of completing projects during the Covid-19 pandemic? How have client demands changed?

GABRIELLE ROUSSEAU: The types of projects we work on now have shifted. A year into the pandemic, the majority of our commissions consisted of residential and office renovations. We saw that working from home had considerably altered people’s views of their surroundings. Renovations increased tenfold. With fewer expenses and a booming real estate market, investing in your home seemed to be a popular decision. Clients were no longer just aiming for practicality, but also showed more and more interest in building their dream homes. Conversely, companies now need to work much harder to get their employees to come back to the office, given that working from home has been proven to be effective. We’ve felt an essential change in companies’ visions for physical workspaces. Before, the goal was often to optimize square meterage with open spaces. With alternating schedules and shared workstations now an option, offices require fewer desks. Employees can be productive at home while still preferring to have meetings in person. Clients are now

WU TO WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Yu Ting, founder of Shanghai-based Wutopia Lab, explains why his practice is centred on the concept of complex systems, discusses how the use of labyrinths in design enkindles a sense of wonder, and predicts a turn towards an interdisciplinary approach to architecture.

As told to Amandas Ong Portraits Olivier Hero

YU TING: As designers, we often see the world from the perspective of a healthy person: after all, we assume that we’re going to be strong in mind and body to do our work. But in recent years, because of illness in my family, I’ve started to see that so many of the spaces that we traverse every day are not suited to the needs of people who aren’t able-bodied. It’s critical to imagine the world from the vantage point of the audience I’m designing for. When I started designing spaces for children, I realized that my daughter, who was young at the time, saw her surroundings very differently from me, as an adult who’s 1.78 m tall. I’ve become more concerned with the human body and how it interacts and leaves an imprint on physical spaces. Another growing concern is our identity: whether you’re Shanghainese, or someone who’s unwell, or someone who’s studied abroad, or someone who’s from the LGBTQ community – there are countless factors that influence the way you engage with design and the built environment. I try to be conscious of that. So the reason why I’ve made an effort to design an eclectic array of spaces, is because I’m interested in the affinity between our environment and different types of identities, moods and desires. I think of the world as adhering to a model of complex systems. Let’s take the example of a closed system that is segregated from any outside forces. This is a system that would fail very quickly. If it is to thrive, it needs to be built on a multitude of exchanges and relationships. Some of these relationships may be in conflict, but others will be congruous with each other. Such a variegated system is bound to stay in flux – it cannot be unchanging, because its boundaries are always expanding. It devours simpler systems and makes them obsolete, and its strength is in its sustainability. We could observe the structure of cities, and of architecture, through the prism of the complex system. A reductive approach to either would not be sustainable, because we need to consider the fluidity of elements that govern them. So, an interdisciplinary approach is essential: it helps me to appreciate exactly how complex, and multifarious, our world is. Once I started seeing design and architecture as a series of complex systems, I made a conceptual shift away from what I learnt early in my career, which was Mies van der Rohe’s axiom that ‘less is more’. I think the latter philosophy runs the risk of being schematic, and working with it might weaken the features of the spaces that we encounter every day. Conceptualizing a dining room as

In Practice

just a dining room, rather than a space that influences and is influenced by other spaces around it, yields a design that is limited in meaning. In design, whether it’s for the interior or exterior, what I aspire towards is ‘half-transparency’, where there’s a sense of communing with invisible elements within the space. I also enjoy tapping into the idea of mingling layers: this is perhaps because I live in Shanghai, where the weather is often grey and cloudy. This isn’t a city where we could emulate architecture that interacts with light, the way you might observe somewhere in the Mediterranean. With almost 200 days of gloomy skies every year, what I can do is to harness the effect of shadows on the buildings I design. The contrast between light and darkness, across the Shanghainese landscape, is reminiscent of the composition of traditional Chinese ink painting. What I like to do is to create silhouettes with my designs. The use of shadow play ties back into my theory of complex systems, which emphasizes a lack of fixity and constancy in our surroundings, and the possibility that the flutter of a wing could lead to a tremor elsewhere. I think it’s vital to challenge the complacency of believing that things always stay the same. When the person you love most falls very sick, you start to realize that health, among other things you take for granted, is not something that remains constant. I got used to this fluctuation, and tried to reflect the idea of movement and transition in my work over the years. In China – and I don’t know how common this phenomenon is in other parts of the world – it’s common for designers to ask the client: ‘What sort of style are you aiming for?’ And you work according to the client’s desires. I think this is totally wrong. You could enrich and bring more value by pushing back occasionally. So it’s important to study the proposal, understand why the client wants specific ideas delivered, and take note of the ones that haven’t been fully developed or require more thought. That’s not to say that the client and the designer should be at conflict with each other – they’re just two forces within a complex system, who can meet in the middle but have different ideas to bring to the table, as most human beings do. I apply the concept of ‘glocalization’ to my work by taking into account the diversity of meanings that can be generated when individuals come together to contemplate one idea. For example, the visual image of ‘mountains’ might look very different to a non-Chinese person than to a Chinese one. The objective is never to prove that my idea is superior, but to find that liminal

Yu Ting poses inside Shanghai-based Sinan Books Poetry Store, for which his studio inserted a metal structure into a former church from 1932. The design was inspired by, but is not ‘touching’, the original building.

YU TING’S KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES Fluidity Consider how a panoply of desires, attitudes, identities and bodies will be sharing the same space Silhouettes Contrast light and darkness to create a sense of constant movement Dialogue Challenge

the ideas that the client brings to the table, and work towards middle ground Magic Realism Try to see the extraordinary in the everyday, and accentuate it Open-Mindedness There is always the opportunity to learn more and be proven wrong What I’ve Learned

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INFLUENCER

EcoLogicStudio

THE DARK SIDE OF GREEN CITIES 55

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SPACES

Workspaces need to allow things to unfold Why hospitality interiors are plastered with positivity. Workplaces become about more than just work. Welcome to the restoration renaissance. How can interiors keep cool as temperatures climb? The underexploited potential of cashierless stores.

Philip Kottlorz

HYBRID OFFICES

If we can work from anywhere, do we still need offices? The general consensus is that yes, we’ll still require somewhere to come together, but that workplaces will be about more than just work.

Studio Alexander Fehre takes ‘creative workspace’ to the extreme with a circus-inspired interior for Breuninger that looks more like a photoshoot set – which, in fact, it also is.

When our contributing workspace editor Riya Patel explored how a number of tech giants were planning their office comebacks (see page 20), she found that many of their employees weren’t planning to come back at all – or at least not full-time, anyway. Already at the start of the pandemic, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees that around half of them could anticipate working from home permanently over the coming five to ten years. Google expects over half of its 140,000 employees to work part-time in the office, and another one-fifth to work from home permanently, a sentiment solidified with a tweet from CEO Sundar Pichai: ‘The future of work at Google is flexibility.’ This phenomenon doesn’t just apply to the tech sector, either. Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, estimates that

Work

25 to 30 per cent of the workforce will be working from home multiple days a week by the end of this year. It’s therefore likely that less office space will be dedicated to desks, and that a company’s HQ will be a different kind of home base, one where employees gather for meetings, events and social occasions. An employee perk, not a place purely for productivity. Somewhere to foster company culture and facilitate face-to-face time. These two last points can’t be overlooked, as they’re exactly what many employees lacked during lockdowns. In the UK, for instance, a March 2021 study of remote workers by intelligent workplace learning platform HowNow showed that despite the majority of respondents wanting to continue remote working in some capacity, more than two-thirds (67 per cent) felt disconnected from their colleagues. Just under half (49 per cent)

Spaces

Workspace + Photo Studio

At the 4,500-m2 logistics centre of fashion retailer Breuninger in Sachsenheim, Germany, Studio Alexander Fehre wanted to dramatically depart from conventional offices to give team members a strong sense of identity within the company. Described as a ‘creative playground’ meets ‘highly functional office’, the flexible space includes photo boxes. While these are designated for photoshoots, the idea is that the entire workspace can be used as a set for Breuninger’s content creation, with materials such as reflective foil, corrugated profiles, wire mesh and PVC providing a variety of photography backdrops.

alexanderfehre.de

Philip Kottlorz

Work

SECOND - LIFE

Spaces

STRUCTURES We’re facing climate, cultural and social crises head on. Can making full use of existing buildings make urban life more tenable?

Chen Hao

Sustainability

If there’s one thing that most cities have, and in abundance, it’s old buildings. While these properties may not be created for our times, their functionality is certainly not limited to antiquated programming – and, with urban populations growing at unprecedented rates, any untapped potential is an opportunity lost. Pair that reality with the critical global need for sustainable development, and it becomes clear why adaptive reuse will be a rising force in designing our cities and towns. But what exactly does adaptive reuse entail? As the term reveals, it centres on a main tenet of sustainability: reuse. Although the practice of repurposing buildings is by no means a modern innovation, burgeoning technologies and manufacturing methods are making it possible to future-fit existing sites at a much greater scale. And the benefits of adaptive reuse concern culture just as much as the environment. Preservation of local heritage, community identity, increased housing and commerce opportunities, the retention of a

building’s embodied energy and the conservation of resources count among the long list of pro-points, according to a 2019 report published by European think-tank ROCK (an acronym for Regeneration and Optimisation of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities). Recent years have made adaptive reuse’s popularity among clients and designers obvious. Many high-profile examples have arisen in the institutional sphere, but such projects decorate the worlds of retail, hospitality, work and living, too. Some, like Paris’s revitalized, centuries-old retail landmark La Samaritaine, go as far as mixing sectors in their present-day iterations. Collaborating with local residents and organizations, considering appropriate aesthetic and construction interventions, and carving out room for postCovid hybridity and use changes are all factors in the process. This context of developing relevance meant there was little surprise when our June

WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE If it’s broken, fix it. But certainly don’t discard it. To be honest participants in a circular economy, we need to abide by this rule with buildings and interiors, as with all our material goods. How can a brief be achieved in an existing space? And how can it be done in a way that upholds local culture? Addressing those questions should be the first building block of any design work.

edition of Interiors of the Month presented myriad renovation projects. In fact, three of the five celebrated interiors (including the winner, a library in Finland) were reworkings of existing buildings. The trend was met with wide acclaim from the 15-person jury. ‘In many cases, finding inventive ways to reuse the existing mass of a building, rather than discarding or demolishing it, is one very important aspect of sustainability decisionmaking,’ shared Anastasia Karandinou, architect and course director of the University of East London’s MA Interior Design, during the round’s Live Judging Session. Worthy of note is the fact that construction and demolition junk comprises the

Spaces

biggest waste stream in the European Union. It’s but one of the challenges that responsible renovations and refurbishments can rise to. ‘While shifting use of existing building stock is not as dynamic as a demand-response contract or a shared ride, zoning to allow responsive re-configuration and re-allocation of space is a smart policy principle in a carbon-intensive built environment,’ writes Sue Lebeck for GreenBiz. ‘A thoughtful system could provide more steady revenues to landlords and ease the housing and climate crises plaguing cities and communities.’ LGM

Chen Hao

Historical Residence-TurnedTeahouse

With The Relic Shelter, a teahouse in Fuzhou, China, Neri&Hu proves that history – specifically, the remains of a Qing dynasty official’s residence – doesn’t have to be preserved behind glass. An example of Hui-style architecture, the ancient wooden structure was brought from Anhui to Fuzhou, and the modern hospitality concept was realized as a rammed concrete base topped with a series of gabled copper roofs that echo the form of the enveloped artefact. neriandhu.com

Sustainability

Courtesy of Kéré Architecture

PASSIVE COOLING As once-temperate climes turn too hot to handle, some buildings are proving incapable of keeping their cool. Could constructions from closer to the equator – places well-versed in natural cooling methods – indicate a way forward?

The passive cooling system at Kéré Architecture’s information technologies campus in Kenya allows the building to withstand high temperatures while preventing dust from damaging IT equipment.

Halfway to boiling point. That’s the temperature with which some places on the planet are now having to grapple. And not just places with ominous names like Furnace Creek in California’s Death Valley – whose recent 54.4°C reading is one of the hottest ever reliably recorded on Earth – but also populous cities like Portland and Seattle. In June, Portland charted an all-time-high of 46.7°C, setting a new record for the third day in a row, while Seattle’s thermometer reached the 42.2°C mark. Not long after came the news that the Amazon rainforest, once a carbon sink, is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it can absorb. While some of the emissions are the result of intentionally burning off areas for meat farming, they’re contributed to by rising temperatures and droughts. These records are new but most buildings in their corresponding cities are not, meaning they were designed with a much

Sustainability

cooler climate in mind. They relied on the ebb and flow of daily highs and lows, with overnight temperatures typically balancing out the spikes. Insulation and ventilation were enough, and air conditioning largely unnecessary. If – or perhaps more appropriately, as – such sweltering temperatures persist, architecture will struggle to cope. This may come as a surprise to some, but not to architects like Mike Fowler of Seattle-based Mithun. In the Pacific Northwest, what once passed as standard will be phased out by the end of the decade and the region will require a new type of building design sooner than expected, he told Fast Company. Other parts of the world will likely face a similar fate. While that may sound as if insulation and ventilation aren’t enough, that’s not necessarily the case. These passive cooling techniques can certainly contribute a great deal – if they’re done in the right way.

101

102

Spaces

Start-up Lions Campus, Turkana

On the banks of Kenya’s Lake Turkana, Kéré Architecture designed an information technologies campus inspired by the towering termite mounds visible around the region. Here, though, the towers provide stack ventilation, naturally cooling the main working spaces by extracting warm air upwards. To supplement, fresh air is introduced via specially designed low-level openings. The structures on the roof terraces will eventually transform into arbours, whose vegetation will provide cooling, shady spaces for outdoor meetings. kerearchitecture.com

Sustainability

103

Yongjoon Choi, courtesy of Uncommon Store

CASHIERLESS STORES

Spaces

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In terms of their spatial design, most automated retail concepts we’ve seen to date have simply deleted checkouts from the equation. Aside from speeding up the process, how could technologies such as Amazon’s Just Walk Out revolutionize the entire shopping experience?

Last year we wrote about the fact that Amazon’s investment in automated retail clearly looked set to benefit from the pandemic. Indeed, in March, the company opened its first store outside of the US, in London’s Ealing Broadway, with four more London arrivals within as many months. It also stood to reason that other brands would be quick to follow up on what was a somewhat underinvested area of retail nearfuturism, often in tandem with the e-commerce giant. In the last half year, airport retailers Cibo Express Gourmet Markets and Hudson News have been some of the first to adopt Amazon’s white-label version of the Just Walk Out technology that powers its Go and Fresh stores. Others are looking beyond Amazon’s ecosystem. The last year or so has seen French retailer Monoprix testing cashierless stores, KFC adding contactless collection lockers in Japan and Dunkin’ Donuts musing its own checkout-free pilot; meanwhile, in our home base of the Netherlands, AiFi recently announced a partnership with convenience chain Wundermart to create up to 1,000 new unattended locations across the brand’s international store network. Cashierless checkout start-ups like Standard Cognition have also found it easier to raise money, with a $150 million Series C round lead by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 announced earlier this year, while others, such as Berlin’s Nomitri, have chosen 2021 as the right moment to emerge from stealth mode. Thus far, however, there’s been little to indicate how this inflection point in the future of FMCG retail will transform store design, other than the removal of checkout lanes and their attendant impulse-purchasedriving infrastructures. But even that could alter the way such spaces are designed in the future. ‘An average supermarket could reclaim roughly 15 per cent of its floor area by eliminating checkout counters,’ says Mark Landini, whose firm Landini Associates has reimagined supermarket floor plans for the likes of Esselunga, Walgreens, Loblaws, and Aldi. This, he says, could lead to a store’s overall footprint becoming more adaptable. The space saved could be used to expand a store’s offering, whether through products, services or amenities. Or

full-service supermarkets could simply shrink to fit into spaces once considered too small. This, says Landini, would open the door for more supermarkets in a larger number of urban neighbourhoods and ‘food deserts’ worldwide. In general, the architect sees huge potential for rethinking store layouts based on this technology. ‘For example, “just walk out” can also mean “just walk in, anywhere”, which opens the door to 360-degree entry and exit points, and frees designers from traditional approaches to space planning.’ Aside from such conjecture, one early signal of what’s to come can be read in the launch of the Uncommon Store, part of new shopping centre The Hyundai Seoul. Designed by Atelier Archi.Mosphere, the collaboration between Hyundai IT&E and Amazon treats this new format with far more ambition than any of the latter’s proprietary spaces. Given the hyperactive phraseology surrounding automated retail (‘grab and go’ and ‘just walk out’) most existing examples copy the cramped, circuitous floor plans of their analogue forebears. Similarly, while one of the key benefits to retail operators of these data-rich stores is reactive stock keeping, something that should result in a more tailored, and thus streamlined, product offer, many still carry an overwhelming number of SKUs – not exactly the sort of environment that encourages throughflow, or a shopping experience that prioritizes efficiency. A store that knows what you want shouldn’t need to give you so many options. Whatever your feelings about Atelier Archi.Mosphere’s retro-futurist look, the maximalism of the laminate, acrylic and metal treatment – apparently inspired by 1960s theatre frontages – only works in such a small space (33 m2) because it’s countered by the lack of freestanding units and limited (yet curated) product selection. As the logo above the store indicates, you should shoot through this space like an arrow. That interior therefore has to make an impression at speed, while also getting out of your way. If the destiny of convenience retail is automation, surely the design needs to be as dynamic as the stores they serve? PM / TI

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Retailers need to think beyond a coffee shop In the age of experiential retail, more and more brands are branching out beyond their core offer. Many are integrating hospitality concepts such as cafés, restaurants, bars and even hotels, a sure-fire way to increase footfall and dwell time. Or is it? Over the following pages, we break down the benefits – and trappings – of hospitality-infused retail, and explore how the union could be pushed further.

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Courtesy of Crosby Studios and Avgvst

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The term ‘experiential retail’ has been thrown around a lot over the past decade. And in the post-pandemic period, one strategy to achieve it has gained new relevance: hospitality-infused retail. Yes, hospitality suffered just as much as retail in 2020/21, but it’s arguably much more likely to bounce back quickly as people return to socializing, holidaying and wining and dining – outside of their homes, for a change. ‘The main reason the hospitality industry took a huge hit during that time was because government policy forced it to close, not because consumer demand abated,’ says Ian Johnston, founder and creative director of research, strategy and design consultancy Quinine, pointing to an article in The Guardian that in the UK in May, retail sales actually fell as people focused on dining out. In a world where cutting-edge retailers are trying out new concepts and experiences, why are we still seeing this amalgam employed so often and across all levels? Because, to solidify themselves in the retailtainment category as e-commerce escalates, brands are playing host, inviting customers to engage with them on a deeper level in physical spaces. A meal in a restaurant is multisensorial; a great night away gets stored in your memory bank. Here, we break down three approaches to hospitalityinfused retail that differ greatly in dwell time, from the in-and-out encounter to lingering dining experiences to overnight stays. Words Tracey Ingram Retail

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RETAIL X HOSPITALITY TOOLKIT Illustrations Simon Flöter

THINK TERMINOLOGY, NOT TYPOLOGY When speaking of spatial design, ‘hospitality’ often refers to the type of project: café, bar, restaurant, hotel and so on. Retail brands wanting to infuse hospitality into their spaces might do better to focus on the other definition, that of the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests and strangers, and weave it through their projects. 146

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02 FOLLOW THE BRAND INSTEAD OF THE CROWDS It’s easy to install a coffee shop inside a store, but is it the right strategy? Any extensions need to elevate the core offer and help customers better connect with the brand. Can a hospitality addition – from the concept right down to the details – help to strengthen its sustainability ethos, for example,or reflect its history and traditions or future goals?

EXPLORE NEW TERRAIN Rather than immediately resort to tried-and-tested addons, examine whether there’s an opportunity to open up new territories in the retail-hospitality matrix. Nordstrom’s food-to-shop-floor service and Burberry’s Thomas’s Café’s ‘unlockable’ menu items are just two examples.

04 CONSIDER FLEXIBLE ADDITIONS Agility is becoming more important for every sector, retail and hospitality included. It might make more sense for a specific store to integrate flexible food and dining concepts – elements that help it transform its function after shopping hours, for instance. Toolkit

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Products should age gracefully Waste material and outdated stock reborn as new products, made-to-measure designs, surfacing innovations and more. Highlights from France’s Design Parade. Snøhetta and Saferock develop net-zero concrete.

TARKETT ATELJÉ Note Design Studio and surfacing label Tarkett joined forces for the latter’s new Stockholm showroom, Ateljé. A dedicated forum for sustainability and design talks, Ateljé follow’s Tarkett’s ‘human-conscious design’ philosophy: ‘Interior spaces should support, inspire and connect the people that use them, while at the same time considering the impact on the planet.’ Scandinavian design, a contrasting colour palette and clever solutions with Tarkett’s products characterize the space. tarkett.com

SUPERTOYS SUPERTOYS WATER IS ALSO JUST A HUMAN NFT platform Foundation hosted Supertoys Supertoys’ Water Is Also Just a Human series – six unique variants of a metamorphosed chair ‘connected to different states of water’ – during Collectible 2021. Once acquired by collectors, the NFT 3D-file can be used to 3D print the seats in 1:1 scale locally. The designers utilized algorithms to transform fluid, aqueous spheres into a workable base for the phygital chair. supertoyssupertoys.com

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MOSA RE-GLOW Outdated collections from Dutch ceramic tile company Mosa have been revitalized by Studio Rens, in partnership with Cor Unum Ceramics. The Re-Glow treatment gives these tiles a fresh lustre, and clients a tool for incorporating touches of colour into interiors. The new-and-improved designs play on contrasts and gradients, treated with a brushstroke-like effect.

Dana Savic

mosa.com

QEEBOO FALLEN CHANDELIER XL A nod to Thonet’s curvaceous 19th-century designs, Qeeboo’s Fallen Chandelier XL is an oversized floor lamp infused with a sense of surrealism, designed by Studio Job. Measuring at 2 m wide and weighing an impressive 83 kg, the whimsical white-light chandeliers – which can also be installed outside – are constructed from fibreglass in pastel pink, black and white. qeeboo.com

CAMIRA FABRICS CRAGGAN FLAX Fabric manufacturer Camira has introduced Craggan Flax to its line-up, a high-performance wool-and-flax upholstery textile that builds upon its predecessor, Craggan. Its designers set out to develop a durable, versatile upholstery option – the line has numerous seating applications, and its palette range comprises 15 colours. The new inclusion of flax is an important part of the end-product’s visual make-up: once dyed, it creates a striking two-tone effect in contrast with the wool. camirafabrics.com

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NOW OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS Submit your best work to the Frame Awards 2022. All submissions will be published on our platform and judged by our inclusive jury panels. Be in the running for an Interior of the Month Award and the Interior of the Year Award. frameweb.com