Community_patch: Retail's Influence on the Public Space

Abstract

You find yourself on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, surrounded by beautiful well maintained landscapes, shops and boutiques. On one side is a gorgeous, lavish boutique with engaging windows, detailed illumination, and modern décor. Across the boulevard is a plain, tedious, uncomplicated masonry structure, with a single penetration for entrance. Both hold the same products and goods on the inside, but business at the lavish boutique is three times the sales of the shop across the way. Architecture has the ability to play a decisive part, a catalyst, possible of generating an authentic identity for people and space. This identity and life style draws the consumer in, allowing the experience to overwhelm and enlighten the individual. Architecture today no longer constitutes merely a part of marketing our environment; it has become the essence of it. [page 7 of Brandscapes by Klingmann] Architects should not limit the use of branding to sell a product and create the most profit available, but thrive on the opportunity for that architecture to develop an identity for those affected by its presence, including the surrounding community. Experience is the product of a public space. How can the elements and components of a retail design be used in the promotion of experience in the public space? Can you compare a store selling a product to a public space selling an experience? This is a study of understanding the components of retail design and applying those elements to the design of a public place, where experience has become the product and function of the space. Elements being studied from retail design; How can an intimate relationship be developed through the experience of the function of commercial architecture? How can retail location principles, program plans, and branding of space relate to those similar characteristics in public space design? After the exploration of the effects of experience related to architecture, the designer can focus on the creation of an intimate relationship between the structure, the product, and finally the consumer. That product being designer runway shows with vintage tee shirts, or the experience of community gathering for academic reasons and services. Architecture has the influence to generate affirmative space that prompts memories, discoveries, and desires. Customers develop a yearning of want because of the environment they are experiencing. The relationship of the function to the experience is what connects branding, identity and social normality to architecture. The ability to create a space to hold merchandise is the architecture’s function of a store, but the experience of that function creates the desire that motivates the individual to buy. The ability to create a space to gather the public is the architecture’s function, but the experience of that function is what creates a continuous revisiting and yearning to return. Elements of study: Exploration of retail site selection to public space selection. Successful retail diagram compared to successful public spaces [the student/ youth community center/ services].