Creating places for people - exploring global trends in experiential design

In China today, consumers are looking for fresh experiences. In the past, certain design principles prevailed in the Chinese market, with bright lighting, good circulation and elegant finishes accepted as standard for the majority of retail interiors. But in recent years, Chinese consumers have come to expect more from shopping malls and retail environments. As Benoy’s Qin Pang, Director, Head of Shanghai Studio, explains:

“People have become accustomed to homogenous interior spaces and designs. Now, they want to know, ​‘Where am I?’ ​‘What’s the story behind the design?’ Increasingly for us at Benoy, these questions have become the starting point for our projects. And storytelling has become really important in creating a unique character for each retail interior.”

To shape meaningful narratives through their work, Qin and his team often leverage design cues from local culture, looking to take consumers deeper into individual spaces through connections to landscape and history. But here again, standard tropes of the past no longer cut it with discerning audiences:

“People are not satisfied anymore with simple pagoda designs as representations of Chinese culture,” says Qin. ​“They’ve heard these stories before. Today they want a new perspective on place and identity – and it’s our job as designers to find it. We use environmental graphics and placemaking to break those historical moulds and create something new.”

In Shenzhen, for example, Benoy worked on the Huaide ID Competition, a 200,000 m² project that takes inspiration from the nearby Phoenix Mountain. The idea was to capture the story of the landscape within the interior design scheme, creating cave-like lobby spaces and topographical shapes that become, in Qin’s words, ​“abstracted into architecture and interior language, with a very clear storyline behind the design”. 

As part of its storytelling approach, water is a recurring motif in Benoy’s APAC retail interiors. From the water market scenes in the basement of ICONSIAM in Bangkok, to the Qinhuai River theme running through the Nanjing Jianye Wuyue Plaza, Benoy uses water to connect modern consumers to historic scenarios full of experience and memory. As Qin explains, it is also used to engage people in new and unusual ways:

“The water village is a fairly common retail feature in cities like Shanghai. But in Beijing, which is quite a dry place, the water village is a novel concept. By transplanting this design element into a new environment, you create something unique. And people love it. It’s not something they’ve experienced before, and they come again and again.”

And this, says Kali Chan, Design Director for Interiors at Benoy, is the driving principle behind Benoy’s experiential design work. When people visit public retail spaces, observes Kali, they want to escape their routines. They want ​“to feel, wow, this is really different from my normal life”. Kali points to the Elements Mall in Hong Kong, where Benoy introduced themed interior zones within the mall that group around the Kowloon station, linked by a complete retail loop to allow effective orientation and crowd flow. It is, she says, ​“a seminal project for Hong Kong and for APAC as a whole”. 

Across the region, immersive spaces and ​‘Instagrammable’ moments are now essential for customer engagement. By creating ​“truly memorable experiences”, retail interiors entice, inspire and delight. The trick, says Kali, is to establish the right blend of old and new, physical and digital, to achieve cross-generational appeal. The Seazen Suzhou Wuyue Plaza in China, for example, balances modern and contemporary interiors and architecture. And in Nanjing Jianye Wuyue Plaza, cloud formations have been applied to the creation of interior spaces, with the intention of conveying the beauty of modern art in the image of traditional culture. Tailoring design approaches to different areas is also critical, as Kali concludes: 

“In mainland China, interiors are increasingly linked to culture, with different themes occurring within one space. Whereas in Hong Kong, it’s the quality of the space that’s important, with a stronger focus on modern lifestyle upgrades and comfort. So, our designs differ, depending on the market. It’s the audience, not the designer, who ultimately shapes the interior design language.”

Across EMEA and North America, localisation and heritage are becoming the central foundations of experiential design schemes. In reaction to years of intangible online retail and brand abstractions, retailers are looking to provide more physical and authentic experiences, anchored in original brand values. As Jon Grant, Interior Design Director in Benoy’s London studio, explains: 

“More and more, we’re seeing big brands going back to their core roots and values. Nike and Adidas are doing it. And in the design schemes we’re working on, it’s about keeping things simple, not plastering logos everywhere or using multiple materials, not overdesigning. Clients and consumers today are looking for a pared-back authenticity. People want something they can touch and feel, something they can believe in.”

In the UK, this trend is in part a response to the gentrification of the high street, which created a uniformity of retail experiences for consumers. In North America, Bess Liscio, Senior Associate Director at Benoy’s Montréal studio, believes the pandemic also helped to accelerate engagement with more meaningful retail environments: 

“People have emerged from Covid looking at their lives differently. They’re asking themselves, ​‘Who do I want to give my money to?’, ​‘What does this brand stand for and what does this purchase mean?’ So, retail interiors are starting to educate and engage on a more emotional level, showing customers how products are made, where materials come from. People want to enter stores feeling inspired, and leave feeling they’re part of something real. Retailers are responding to that.”

In the first-ever collaboration between its studios in North America and EMEA, Benoy is working on a range of stores and design development for performance apparel company, Canada Goose. The brand’s identity is firmly rooted in its Canadian heritage, with strong links to indigenous communities and sustainable design practices. And as Bess explains, retail locations bring the brand and its heritage qualities to life through unique experiences, art and design: 

“All the artwork is real. All the soapstone sculptures are real. There’s nothing fake about it. They’ve created something very authentic, beautiful and robust, and the quality of the garments, the warmth and sustainability of the materials, is echoed in the elevated, authentic experience you find instore.”

The stripped-back aesthetic also resonates with younger consumers who, in their desire for visible eco-performance, increasingly shun retail excess or extravagance. Retailers who want to stay relevant need to adopt flexible spaces to present a more simplistic and considered proposition. As Bess observes, ​“we need to move to the speed of culture; young people can make or break a brand, and those decisions often come down to what’s perceived to be fake or real. The new logo is no logo; and if young consumers believe in it, you’ve got them forever.”

Find out more about our Interiors and Experiential Design work.