Journey: Holistic experience of shopping

Abstract

This Project explores the idea of shopping, the last reaming form of public activity. The idea of shopping has been deterritorialized from the private retail environment toward the public urban environment. By questioning how a brand can transform its physical retail environment, this project deconstructs the concept of consumerism from the exclusive activity of purchasing into an inclusive urban social activity. This design deconstructs the idea of a storefront as a threshold post functionally so that the store itself becomes the storefront that allows people to enter an immersive retail environment and re-enter the urban retail environment. The program of this exploration is a watch flagship store located in downtown Chicago that welcomes customers through a landscape that plays with the experience of time. There are also four satellite installations that extend this shopping experience out into the surrounding urban context – each satellite is responsive and reactive to urban activity, and each creates transformative space that experientially connects back to the flagship store.