Retail Design: What’s in the Name?

Abstract

Retail today is what it is due to the developments that occurred in the past. By reflecting on that past and comparing it to today’s developments we should understand better what is happening in retail design today and what might be coming up in the future of retail design practice. Therefore, this chapter elaborates on two interesting developments which originated in the past , and which might offer insights or inspiration to anyone involved in the retail design discipline: (1) how retailers strived to seduce their clientele on many different levels and how different senses already were a (design) focus many years ago, (2) how stores have always been on the forefront of new (technical) developments. By understanding history, we can relate easier to what the profession of a retail designer beholds today. Next the retail design discipline is discussed. Designing retail interiors was only recognised as a design discipline in its own right very recently (Christiaans, 2012; Murialdo, 2014; Quartier, 2011). Earlier, it was more an intuitive expression of commercial acumen (Fitch and Knobel, 1990). Great retailers of the nineteenth century (for example the aforementioned department stores) were primarily commercial entrepreneurs. A first sign of the increasing attention given to specifically designed commercial interiors can be traced back to 1912 when De Bijenkorf, formerly known as ‘Magasin de Bijenkorf’ hired two different architects to design their new to be build store – architect Van Straaten jr. (1862–1920) for the exterior, and architect Schlöndorf for the interior. The store building, though, was still considered as an economic unit, with a particular cost per square foot, causing space considerations as layout and departmentalisation to be considered purely from the standpoint of sales per square foot (Markin et al., 1976). As mentioned earlier, this idea lasted until the end of the previous century. When the value of store design increased, retail design gradually evolved into a design discipline in its own right.