Hoffritz for Cutlery store - New York 1939 - Morris Lapidus, Architect
Morris Lapidus, an architect known for the flamboyant style of his 1950s Miami Beach hotel designs such as the Eden Roc and Fontainebleau, was also a first-rate, innovative store designer. In his 1996 autobiography, Too Much is Never Enough, he describes his early successes in the 1930’s in the field of retail store design. He was a pioneer of store design who developed many of the modern concepts, which today are taken for granted. He opened up storefronts to expose the merchandise and the entire store at once. He used bright colors and intriguing lighting to attract customers. For his stores and hotels, he developed a palette of amorphous shapes used in ceiling treatments, ornament, furniture and plans called chevrons, beanpoles, woggles and cheese holes. In time, his use of these shapes and his compelling color selections congealed into a gestalt that formalized as a Jetsons-like archetypical design aesthetic that may have never really existed as a style, but which today is instantly recognizable. Stores like Starbucks, Panera, and the new McDonalds prototype have adopted many of his playful and entertaining design concepts.
The Lapidus store designs of the 1930’s and 40’s were groundbreaking in their expansive use of glass, focused lighting, intriguing plans, innovative signing, theatrical impact and timelessness. He was a fearless designer, who was regularly mocked by his more “sophisticated” colleagues as a “schlock meister”, but nevertheless continues to have a significant impact on the world of commercial design.
Who can argue with Apple’s success? This well conceived brand has created an almost religious following of consumers. For years Apple was the darling of the graphic arts world. It was a safe harbor for lost and frustrated computer users. Apple products looked good, were functional and didn’t crash. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, Apple products were not associated with Bill Gates’ Microsoft, which over time became the ultimate Uncoola: a technological drink that only the desperately thirsty masses could swallow. The world needed a Plan B and a good portion of the retail buying public took a bite of the Apple offered by the devilish Steve Jobs. It became the thinking man’s brand: first for computers, then for music delivery, then cell phones, and now with the iPad, electronic print delivery.
Has Steve Jobs created a retail religion built around a line of products that are so well designed they appear to have been evolved by the power of Nature rather than the constructed by the hands of Man? Has Apple made every other competitor look inferior or inept? Are people now buying the product because it has become so obviously technologically superior, with such cachet that the brand is a symbolic shortcut proof of the purchaser’s savvy? Are Apple stores designed as a retail holy place for Apple followers? The answer is “All of the above.”
Of course Apple has produced its share of aardvarks and dodo birds like the G4 Cube and the Newton, but even as Nature creates such anomalies, the list of Apple commercial flops is always surpassed by its successes. The old baseball adage about succeeding at bat by failing two-thirds of the time comes to mind. But, sometimes even the commercial successes don’t dovetail with the dogma. Refer to the 90’s iMac with the teal green, bullet train look. Like a loud fart in a quiet church, that one is a bit embarrassing from a “timeless design” standpoint.
But the strength of the brand is not totally about the reality of the Apple philosophy put into practice, the technology, or the way the Apple products look. It is a retail religion filled with references to the devil (Bill Gates), rote acceptance of the quality, coolness, the sacred image of the products, and a world view that says “I don’t bother with other people’s crap…I have taken a bite from the Apple and I no longer fear the technological gods. I can deal with it so long as I have the user-friendly interfaces, the purity of the white products, and the pronouncements of Our Leader to guide me and prepare me for the unknowable and incomprehensible personal technology future.
Apple is my religion, my world-view, my friend, and my guardian angel. I am a MacHead. I enter the retail church of Apple and I am comforted by the purity of the environment. I seek the blessing and insight of the high priests of electronic fashion. I wear the black garb of our leader. I shave my head. I repeat the Jobian manta “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”
I am not a consumer. I am a believer. I have taken a bite of the Apple. So be it. Yea ye…I love Mac and Mac loves me.
I was doing my morning exercises flipping channels when I came upon an exercise infomercial called “Perfect Booty”. Having just finished reading $20 per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better by Christopher Steiner, I was very pleased to see that retailing is alive and well on T.V. at least. A Perfect Booty for sale…only in America.
But back to Steiner’s book. The basic premise is that, as gas prices inevitably rise (assumption), the face and pace of America will change. People will adapt and become more fugal because everything that can be driven, created, or delivered by the use of petroleum will be, by the time gallon gas prices reach the teens, de facto unaffordable, at least for everyone but the rich. So people will cozily huddle together in big cities, wiz around the subway system, take walks in the park, congregate at the band shell and join hands and sing Kumbaya. This really sounds good, He had me almost rooting for the end of oil. I always wanted to be one of those little top-hatted men in a French Impressionist painting walking by the lagoon in the park with a big-bootied parasol girl at my side on a sweet summer day. Que Seurat Seurat…
Alas, there is a downside to all this bliss. Gas prices will be up and Walmart will be down and out. No more cheap product from China; no more container ship bulk deliveries; no more plastic thingies; no more out-lying suburbs; and no more affordable flights to Florida; but that makes no difference because there will be no more people up North wanting to vacation in the South (they will all have frozen to death because of the high cost of home heating oil). No McMansions, no McMuffins, no mac and cheese, the suburbs will become a vast wasteland of untended lawns, spalling circular drives, and not-so-great great rooms. Oh, the humanity…
All of this does not sound promising for retail stores and retail store designers. If Steiner is correct. When it becomes too expensive to move about in general, going to someplace (like a store) may not make economic sense. At that point it would be best to have the merchandise come to the buyer rather than the buyer go to the merchandise. Thus, unlike Walmart and Costco, Amazon should thrive. Stores will become electronic. You will be able to shop and buy on television or on the Internet. Wait a minute. You can do that now. Well you can’t replace the experience of trying on a new fake-fur coat to see how it fits or sliding an expensive diamond ring on your finger. So maybe the high-end stores will continue to exist, and maybe display-only, museum-like stores will become commonplace as funnels for Amazon and other websites. There may still be a need for store designers, in a shrinking market, to practice their trade in the coming oil-starved century.
But is possible, that oil prices will not rise exponentially, or that energy substitutes will be found. Or people will continue to shop for fun or by necessity because they have satisfied their need for balloons and ice cream cones at the Impressionist parks. In which case, life will go on. Stores will continue to be built. Designers will continue to design.
I think the only real fault in Steiner’s book can be found in his reliance in seeking the truth about the future from all-knowing architects who live (or wish they lived) in high-rise condos overlooking Central Park. These are not mall people, lifestyle shoppers, strip center users, discount store regulars, drive-thru diners, or even gasoline purchasers. They walk a few blocks to work or take a cab on drizzly day. They grab a sushi lunch at a nearby chic café. They ride bikes in the park pulled by their puppies. I don’t think they are using the subway, strolling through the drug-war zones, or contemplating the real urban reality. Urban living has its positives and negatives. Living in the city is a choice at this time. And in the future it will remain one of the choices, as will other lifestyles so long as there is a middle-class that longs for the toys, treasures, education and opportunities possessed by the elite. These aspiring American folk have always been the driving force behind the economy and as a result, they create need for retail stores. Should $20 a gallon gasoline kill off retailing, this vital segment of the economy and an integral part of the middle-class dream, it is always comforting to know that we all can still enjoy a walk in Central Park…proud to be wearing our perfect booties.
Finding the correct lighting solution for your retail store has become a complicated project. In addition to designing lighting to perform as required for the illumination of the various tasks within a store (general display, individual product display, transaction areas, general circulation, storage, etc.), designers must do this within energy code requirements. These codes impose a tough burden on both designers and lighting manufacturers but they have reduced typical retail lighting loads by at least 50% over the past couple of decades. Lighting designer, Warren Charter of Charter Sills has suggested that we use an automotive analogy to help find the efficiency of lighting fixtures as follows:
“The easiest way to understand Lumens per Watt (LPW) is the same way we look at Miles per Gallon (MPG). Similar to having a car that gets high MPG, say like a Prius, we want lamps that produce more light output, or lumens for the wattage they consume. Some high LPW lamps include the low wattage HID par, or compact fluorescent lamps. Lamps that are similar to the Hummer, that have a lower LPW include some of the older incandescent like the A-lamps, and most R-lamps. In short, the higher the LPW the more efficient the lamp is as it relates to light output. Technically speaking, the formula for LPW is the same as MPG. Simply take the total number of lumens for the lamp, and divide by the wattage for the lamp to determine the LPW. Example, 900 Lumens divided by 60 Watts gives you an LPW of 15.”
Generically, incandescent lamps have an LPW of about 18 and LED, Metal halide, and Fluorescent have LPW’s that range from 30 to 110. So why not just pick the most efficient lamps and run with them. Well just like automobiles every lamp has different characteristics. A car that gives you great mileage may be underpowered for autobahn-type use, or it may lack the agility to negotiate a mountain road, or it may be incapable of being driven off-road. It all depends where and how you want to drive. Similarly with your choice of lamp and fixture types, it all depends on what you want the lamp to accomplish. Some jobs, like individual product display, may require using lamps that less efficient but more focused. Other tasks like providing for general circulation within a store can be accomplished with high LPW lamps. Within the current lighting and energy codes, the designer has a fixed total of watts available for use. The trick is to balance the type and number of lamps and fixtures available to achieve proper lighting while maintaining an energy focus.
Designing retail stores offers many career benefits not found in other types of projects. These benefits might help jump-start a young designer’s career or could prove to be so enjoyable as to become the core of a continuing retail design practice. Either way the major advantages of designing retail stores over other project types are as follows:
Retail stores are always fast track projects. It is not unusual, for a modest-sized store, to have a timetable of 16 –24 weeks from the signing of the owner design agreement to the grand opening. These compressed design/construction timetables guarantee that the designer will never become bored with a project. In fact, they create their own excitement. They move so quickly that their actual construction, in a way, takes the place of the presentation and modeling modes in the design of other building types. The fruits of design labor are very quickly visible. This compressed time-frame is fitting for the age we live, and makes stores a good project type for younger designers who are accustomed to moving in a quick-paced digital world, and who might find the slower pace of other types of projects difficult. The speed of store projects is fun and rewarding.
Some store designs, namely boutiques, offer the opportunity to build to per square foot budgets not found in other building types. It is not unusual for small stores to include high-end cabinetry, materials, details and lighting otherwise found only in the design of corporate conference rooms, luxury residential kitchens and baths, and high-tech facilities. Designers love to spend other people’s money (wisely of course), and the design of boutique stores often provides this opportunity. There is no room for waste in today’s downsized and efficient stores. This requires the designer be a crafty craftsman.
Store design often incorporates state-of-the-art technology. Sometimes this provides the retailer an edge over its competition; sometimes the technology provides new ways to display merchandise, complete transactions, or tell the product story…think of all the special glazing details which have been developed for storefronts; the computerized electronics to process sales transactions; state of the art lighting techniques (LED, fiber optics, projector lighting); the early use of multiple screen and flat screen technology; the mechanical introduction of mind-altering smells to induce shopper purchases; and the use of music, sounds, and colors to induce other desired patterns of shopper behavior. The careful use of lighting and materials to create “green” stores that must function well and meet or better their retail competitors is another challenge that designers will welcome.
Store designers can have as much fun as movie-set designers by creating an imaginary world, which would not have existed, but for the designer. Their designs can break through conventions because the building type may have to meet the latest design trends. Store designs often have a short life compared to other building types like institutions, corporate offices, and churches, which permits the store designs “to live on the edge”. Dealing in this bold, highly competitive, fast-paced, world is fun. In addition to the store design, identification signs have become an art form in their own right and a technological stretch. All in all: more fun for the designer.
These are the reasons why many choose to become store designers. Do these benefits encourage you to explore this area of design?
The basic functional dynamics of a retail store are simple: show product/sell product.
This activity requires a space to accommodate the show/sell transaction. The space could be a fixed location in a building, a more flexible location like a flea market tent, or a mobile space like an ice cream truck or street vendor. Obviously, the best retail spaces are located near people…potential customers. Thus a physical store will be located on a hot shopping street, or in a mall or airport concourse. A temporary retail space like a tent will be located in a people destination like a flea market or fair. And a mobile retail space has the ability to move into areas were people gather or live like the balloon vendor at an amusement park. What is the best retail environment for the show/sell transaction? The store designer can provide a retailer professional advice about potential locations. The designer must understand the possibilities of the retail space.
The show/sell activity also requires a product to be shown and sold. Products have different physical characteristics, price points, and inherent psychological subtext which act a as guide to the selection of the most likely space to do the showing and selling, and the best showing methodology. Big products (unless they have built-in mobility e.g. wheels) will most likely require that people go to them; small products like balloons can easily be carried about by the retailer on his person thus permitting the product to be brought to the potential customers. Most big products can be viewed from a distance; most small products need to be displayed close to the customer. Products perceived as expensive need to be presented in a proper exclusive setting. Inexpensive products can be displayed in mass. Food products must be sold within standards of sanitation and with visual and olfactory attraction. The rules of the show/sell transaction for every product vary with the type of product. These rules are generally obvious once the individual nature of the product is examined, dissected and catalogued. What are the important qualities of a product, which if properly presented in the retail environment, will lead to a successful show/sell transaction? The store designer can identify and evaluate these product qualities. The designer must know the product.
Once the important qualities of a product are identified, then the best methods to show or display can be evolved. A balloon seller who sells his products deflated as a pile of rubbery objects on a table will fare very poorly against another seller who actually inflates his balloons and makes them appear to float in the air, or one who shapes them like cute a little dog. They must be presented properly to display their important characteristics of colors, shapes, and imprints. The job of display, ideally in a wordless manner, is to tell the best possible story about the product. How to show the product? This determination is the job of the store designer…to identify and create the most effective methods of product display. The designer must show the product.
Someone else will actually sell the product. But the designer must also create the most efficient and pleasant environment to complete the sales transaction.
Identifying the best retail place/knowing the product/showing the product/selling the product: these are the core elements of retail store design.
Is the minimalist movement in store design played out?
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
— Sam Walton
1918 - 1992
American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart