From Intelligent life:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/conte...sign?page=full
Quote:
When online shopping offers choice, convenience and competitive prices, why would anyone go to an actual shop? To try on clothes, perhaps. To sit on sofas or lie on beds. But if you’re after music, film or books, you’re more likely to go straight to the internet. In the digital age, bricks-and-mortar shops have to work much harder to attract our attention, let alone custom. Brands rip out and refit their stores every few years: interior design is, clearly, already crucial to their fortunes. But could design go further, and lure us away from our tablets and back onto the high street?
Curious to explore this territory, we asked four leading architecture and design practices to create a shop. Specifically, in the age of Amazon and e-books, a bookshop to save bookshops.
|
Quote:
Their analysis was stark: “Design on its own will not save the bookshop.” But Roberts was undaunted. “If you leave the model as it is and redecorate, nothing’s going to change. The solution needs to be much more fundamental: informed, strategic and daring.” The bookshop, as Gensler saw it, had to anticipate every sort of literary need, from grabbing a paperback or download, to relaxed browsing, personally tailored reading-lists, self-publishing, book clubs, author events and even an enhanced experience of reading a book in the bookish equivalent of a flotation tank.
A week later, Roberts produces a bird’s-eye view of Gensler’s bookshop, another disarmingly simple drawing containing a lot of original ideas. The first surprise is that you don’t have to enter the store to shop from it: the glass façade is a touchscreen that can be tapped on to download e-books from QR codes. The choice could be infinite—“the whole catalogue of the British Library,” said Roberts, taking on Amazon with a sheet of smart glass.
|
Quote:
Burdifilek's shop, ILB, with its glass facade, "lives right on the street". The plinths carry "a very procured edit" of related things to buy—in this case kitchen equipment, tying in with a cookbook promotion
A elegant composition in steel, glass and wood, Burdifilek's bookshop combines tradition—"the smell of books and beautiful cabinetry"—and technology. A digital back wall and airy stairwell unify the two floors, so "both have equal value"
Coffey's vision includes a bar and printing press, performing writers, floating robots (the silver discs hovering on the left), holograms and good old-fashioned paper, ink, leather and gold leaf
|
Of particular interest was the upfront mandate of 2000 sq ft size.
Very wise.
All the mounting evidence is that the day of the big house bookstore chain is done. There might be room for a handful of them scattered around the biggest cities. But hundreds? Nope.
The future of B&M bookselling is small...