Rethinking Retail

Brief.. 

“Through a battery of increasingly predatory forms, shopping has infiltrated, colonised, and even replaced, almost every aspect of urban life. Town centres, suburbs, streets, and now airports, train stations, museums, hospitals, schools, the Internet, and the military are shaped by the mechanisms and spaces of shopping. The voracity by which shopping pursues the public has, in effect, made it one of the principal - if only - modes by which we experience the city. Perhaps the beginning of the 21st century will be remembered as the point where the urban could no longer be understood without shopping.”

Aim:

The aim of this project is to re-think retail to consider how we ‘shop’, where we ‘shop’ and when we ‘shop’ in context to new developments in virtual and physical retail environments. This project examines the themes of ihi and wehi associated with the creative process. It addresses the intangible resonance within creative practices and acknowledges that design is so much more than the sum of its component physical parts.

Context:

Ihi and wehi are complimentary terms associated with emotional and psychological behaviour. Ihi can be described as an individual’s essential force, charisma, power or charm – which emanates throughout the creative process. Wehi, on the other hand, highlights the internalised feelings that occur in response to ihi.  Sometimes the terms dread or awe are commonly used to describe wehi. In this context, wehi is taken to mean the emotional response on the part of the observer.

How does your work make you feel? How does the work of others make you feel?  What effects, intentional or unintentional, does it provoke or generate? What energy or resonance does your work have for others?

Project:

With the emergence of the Internet and e-commerce current retail shopping experiences are rapidly changing. What are the differences between virtual online shopping environments and the tangible experience of a ‘bricks and mortar’ store? You are to question the experiences of shopping and think of ways to rethink a physical retail environment in relation to emerging trends of online shopping environments. You need to use light to create an experience of ihi and wehi.