Croydon Hamburg Glasgow Southampton From the mid ’90s, we worked closely w i t h H a b i t a t f o r a l m o s t a d e c a d e t o design ten stores across the UK and in Germany. These projects were highly s u c c e s s f u l a n d h u g e l y re w a rd i n g , i n p a r t b e c a u s e o f t h e l e a d e r s h i p a n d vision of the CEOs we worked with. 01
Croydon
We worked with Habitat CEOs Vittorio Radice and, subsequently, Cliff Burrows, both of whom would go on to have stellar careers in global retailing. From Habitat, Radice moved on to Selfridges and Mark & Spencer’s, before creating a European flagship department store conglomerate, encompassing La Rinascente in Italy, Kadewe in Germany, Illum of Denmark and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands. Burrows relocated to Seattle, where he worked alongside Howard Schultz to drive the global expansion of Starbucks over two decades. Each man created a senior team with the ability to source, manufacture, assemble and present an unmatched mix of diverse global homeware products. The result was rich retail environments, every bit as good as those of the original stores created by Terence Conran three decades previously. The stewardship of Radice and Burrows secured Habitat’s reputation as the best value and most engaging design store in the UK.
The stores we designed with them included the 1600m2 Southampton shopping centre outlet, the 2600m2 Glasgow flagship store and the 2750m2 Croydon Retail Park outlet. To help ensure that these retail spaces would be highly desirable retail destinations, many locations partnered with highly regarded local cafés, such as Café Gandolfi in Glasgow.
Vittorio Radice Cliff Burrows
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and iconic
Layering a large glass and timber facade in front of the metal shed softened and domesticised it, pulling the aesthetic closer to that of Habitat’s city centre outlets. The entrance through this new facade opened into a large, glazed hall, which directed you to either a discount outlet to the left or the full price store on the right. We created large mezzanine floors in both spaces, and in the full price store Radice convinced his favourite local Hampstead Italian café to open an outlet. The café offered fabulous, traditional Italian fare a high quality alter native to Ikea’s meatballs. one of the most a large long-established Croydon outlet.
O f a l l t h e H a b i t a t p ro j e c t s w e w o r k e d o n , t h i s edge of town retail shed in Croydon’s Purley Way was
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experimental. It was
s t o re , a t 2 7 5 0 m 2 , a n d w a s s i t u a t e d c l o s e t o Ikea’s
T h e c h a l l e n g e w a s t o c l e a r l y p o s i t i o n H a b i t a t above Ikea, and make it aspirational Croydon
Croydon
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We followed our strategy of making this large industrial shed feel softer and more domestic with the interiors, spraying the ceiling, services and lighting a warm sand colour to evoke the feel of a timber ceiling. This was balanced with a warm tone concrete floor in the main retail spaces, and the use of large scale, movable coloured walls to create product department spaces.
Habitat’s visual merchandising staff had an established homeware narrative: to offer seamless and expansive products, from fur niture to accessories, for each room in the home. By positioning a mezzanine floor centrally within the shed, we were able to offer them more familiar, domestic-focused spaces in which to create the settings and product a d j a c e n c i e s c e n t r a l t o t h i s n a r r a t i v e . To e n h a n c e t h e s p e c i a l s e q u e n c i n g a n d further soften the shed, we also created a raised timber floor through one half of the full price store. Croydon
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The discount store, meanwhile, centred around a perimeter mezzanine. This housed large, double height industrial shelving units clad in cedar fascias, allowing the density of products to be easily visible. In order to achieve both maximum refinement and maximum value, we repurposed a large number of standard and mass produced elements, such as the wire garden fencing appropriated to create the design rich handrail and circulation stairs (illustrated).
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Croydon
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Hamburg
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Hamburgwaspartofatrialexpansionby HabitatintoEurope.Asthestorewaslocated inthefashionableNeuerWallcitycentre district,thedesignprojectfocusedonthe aspirationaldesignvaluesbeingpursuedby Habitatatthattime. Thestoreopenedwitharetailandgraphic artworkexhibitionhighlightingtherecently created21st CenturyClassicscollection.This wasacollectionofuniqueworkrecently commissionedbyHabitatfromemerging youngdesignersandartistsincludingTracey EminandGavinTurk.
The 1270m2 Hamburg store was located over three floors, with a striking red staircase positioned at its centre. This encouraged circulation, and also linked the spaces, addressing a tricky site condition which saw the adjacent property impeding an important circulation route.
Hamburg 18/19
Hamburg
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Hamburg
To encourage circulation into the basement, we opened up a large stairwell at the rear of the store, creating a double link industrial staircase, painted in warm mustard to match the basement floor and pull the visitor down into the space A warm grey concrete floor was used in the rest of the retail spaces, coloured balanced with the open industrial ceilings to provide a sense of spaciousness and compensate for the low ceilings.
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Hamburg
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26/27 BASEMENT GROUND FLOOR FIRST FLOOR
Glasgow
28/29 Situated within a new development in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street, this was a flagship store for H a b i t a t – p a r t o f t h e i r o n g o i n g e x p a n s i o n through the UK. The 2600m2 space extended o v e r t h re e f l o o r s , w i t h a G l a s g o w i n s t i t u t i o n , Café Gandolfi, at the heart of the upper space. This partnership with an iconic Glasgow café was, like the 21st Century Classic collection, indicative of Habitat’s drive and ambition, and their dedication to creating the most successful and enjoyable contemporary homeware retail spaces possible. To achieve a cost effective scheme in such a large premium city centre location demanded a careful design programme. W ithin this space and used through multiple Habitat project at this time We pioneered the use of open industrial ceilings within this space and went on to use them in multiple Habitat projects. The idea of an open industrial ceiling in a premium store was unheard of at the time, but almost two decades later was common currency in both retail stores and office environments.
The open industrial ceilings created a rhythm and special discipline throughout the stores large spaces and were framed with bulkheads and ceiling rafts orientated towards driving the visitor sight lines towards the perimeter and mid floor product presentations.
Glasgow
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Glasgow
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Central to the design was achieving a fluid connection between the sites three floors and the principle route into the store was actually from an entrance on the south side of the site Which necessitated a stair positioned centrally on the lower ground floor and again as with the Croydon project we sourced standard cost effective components such as the wire fencing used on the stairs and balustrades.
Glasgow
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Glasgow
The need to achieve a cost effective design project is clearly visible in the product displays we created for Habitat at the time and in Glasgow we fully realised the use of standard galvanized industrial warehouse shelving, upgraded with the careful addition of standard plastic fluted sheeting, sparsely used timber fascia’s with the perimeter units carefully positioned within the bulkhead walls, back washed with architectural fluorescent lighting.
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38/39 GROUND FLOOR FIRST FLOOR
Southampton
40/41 The last store we created for Habitat was a new development within a mall in Southampton city c e n t re . T h e 1 6 0 0 m 2 s t o re w a s a n i n t e re s t i n g d e s i g n c h a l l e n g e , a s m o s t o f t h e re t a i l s p a c e w a s a c c e s s e d v i a a n e n t r a n c e t h a t h i d t h e scale, and thus the potential, of the site. We created a pivot link from the smaller entrance space into the larger back space: a full height, curved and stepped graphic wall, displaying the hugely successful Habitat graphic art collection. This wall led into a raised floor space, housing the main fur niture collections. To balance and soften the site’s hard edge box volumes, we introduced two large, curved display walls, separating the two principal Habitat product narratives of living room and bedroom. These were balanced by having other departments, such as bathroom, garden and rugs, positioned around the lower concrete spaces.
Southampton
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From the outset the Southampton site was problematic as it was a deep recessed box and at the beginning of the design programme, we knew that central to the success of this retail space would be the lighting. To break the volume down into more intimate spaces we created high level ceiling panels that we used to wash a high level of warm ambient light into each space. Much like the devise of white washing the upper parts of the buildings in the narrow streets of souther n Mediterranean hill towns to achieve daylight at ground level.
Southampton
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For the Habitat Southampton project, we designed a light fitting where we combined an ambient fluorescent wash with prefixed display spot lighting, which were carefully positioned throughout the space and between the ceiling fascia panels
Southampton
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GERARD TAYLOR / Design Studio 1 Butler House, First Floor, 51 Curtain Road, London, EC2A 3PT T 020 7739 8208 e mail gerry@gerardtaylor com skype gerardtaylor com w w w.gerardtaylor.com
