2023-09-22 16:36:49
A leap, some would say evolutionary, in experience and in the commercial space. Something that OMA, the Dutch studio founded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas, and the AMO think tank, had already experimented with the various “stores” designed for Prada up to the more recent ones of Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London or Galeries Lafayette in Paris. I’m here to explain the new Bershka store in Milan the authors of the concept and project Ellen van Loon, one of the partners of the Rotterdam studio, and Giulio Margheriwho also worked with van Loom on the recent exhibition seen at the last Salone del Mobile Beyond the Surface and Monumental Wonders for SolidNature. Sitting on the second floor, that of the fitting rooms, the traditional dressing rooms, we can look down on what has the ambition of become a new type of store, i.e. a service hub in which shopping and distribution, entertainment and service mix for a new “visitors journey”.
©Marco Cappelletti
«From the beginning of the project we were almost obsessed with the two speeds that today, with the growth of e-commerce, has the shopping experience. You can order your item from home, come and try it on here or maybe simply pick it up and go to the fast checkout without any human interaction. Or you can come, choose, try on and pay for it according to the classic route, and you can also book the fitting lounges with a group of friends and share your outfits “augmented” by the filters that you can download with the QR code present in this digital dressing room on Snapchat . And it’s from the synergy between physical and online shopping, new services and functions are created and also a new way of hierarchizing the space…». From the multifunctional lounge, a space to interact and relax to the collection and return points for orders purchased online, up to the dressing rooms equipped with a garment recognition system that can be booked in advance via email, the multiplied functions and services, instead of being peripheral or hidden, become central and an integral part of the new aesthetics that unites from the warehouse to distribution.
«We had the first talks with Bershka in the midst of the pandemic. The acceleration towards e-commerce, which has risen to 80 percent, made people think that “physical” purchasing would disappear, but this was not the case. The most interesting aspect, however, was not in the contrast of the elements, but in their integration. During the Covid period, Bershka used stores closed to the public as distribution hubs.
Herzog & de Meuron, the pure idea of Silvana Annicchiarico 14 July 2023
This made us think that we could avoid continuing to have a distant logistics center, and that instead we could try to concentrate everything in the store. Furthermore, if everything is centralized in one place, including functions such as collection or return, even the sustainability of this wandering of parcels around the world increases… let’s just think about less waste in packaging. That’s what we’re trying to do here, increasing the comfort of the experience at the same time.”
There are the stages of this journey colors, geometric shapes and different materials. Pink for slow changing rooms and traditional checkouts, red for the fastest route and the automatic checkouts, green to define the functional “boxes”, wood for the staircase, and a gray background for the changing room space. As with flows, everything was studied with a 1:1 mockup rebuilt in Breshka’s headquarters in Barcelona.
Design Repubblica on newsstands on 20 September 16 September 2023
«Testing the preliminary theoretical studies in which the percentage of services was increased and diversified is fundamental in this type of space. Service hub is a conceptual idea, then you have to put it on the ground. With the right materials. We have chosen not to use natural or expensive materials, but modern and fresh ones suitable for the new generations. Plastic, for example, which has a marble effect, is recycled. If anything, richness is perceptive, linked to a design that aims to be sensorial. Hard and shiny materials together with others that are soft to the touch and almost three-dimensional. We wanted to build an environment that also played with dreams and imagination. Also for this reason, every element within the space is designed to be removed if it is no longer needed, or its function becomes obsolete.”
The result is more commercial space open to the city (the three floors are now all open towards the gallery), in which the exchange of inside and outside is continuous, as if it were an interface that the young public could use freely. A commercial space, which also wants to focus on the social dimension of shopping.
Expo Osaka 2025, Mario Cucinella unveils the Italian Pavilion by Federica Malara Magliocchi 18 September 2023
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