In search of the Eden Musee

I first came across the Eden Musee while reading Andrea Stullman Dennett's, Wierd and Wonderful, The Dime Museums of America published by New York University Press.

The Eden Musee opened in New York around 1883 and at the time was the equivalent of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London. After a very long search I managed to purchase several of the old catalogues (the oldest is late 1800's). The catalogue above is from September 1905.

The intention of the Musee was to create a Temple of Art. It was filled with tableaux of icy solitudes, the burning sun of Africa as well as figures of distinguished persons, rulers, artists and scientists of the time. The Musee stood on 23rd Street between fifth and sixth avenues for nearly thirty years before closing its doors for the last time in 1915 - a sign of changing times. The collection from the Musee was then moved to Coney Island before it was completely destroyed in a fire in February 1932.
Almost 100 years later, on a recent visit to New York I managed to track down where the old Eden Musee had stood. It was quite a task to find the old site as numbers on buildings and the buildings themselves had changed over time, but below is where I believe it had been.

Learning from Dubai.......up and down the Sheik Rashid Bin Waleed Al Mahktoum Road

One of my favourite books is Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning From Las Vegas. Venturi and Brown took their Architecture students to Las Vegas in the late 1960's as part of a much larger research project. What is so interesting about the book is how they began to deconstruct the whole city and record what they call the Iconography of Urban sprawl into its component parts. For example, directional space, scale, speed, symbol, billboards, illuminated signage and my favourite, the decorated shed i.e. hot dog stands in the shape of a hot dog. On a recent visit to Dubai, I have tried to identify the equivalent of what Venturi calls the 'strip'. Of course in a place such as Dubai there is not such thing yet, but what I did is to identify a main route - in this, case the Sheik Rashid Bin Waleed Al Mahktoum Road which runs from the original city to the megastructures around Jemeirah. Naturally Dubai is not as established in the same way as Vegas but these are examples of what Venturi refers to as the Architecture of Persuasion.

Sustainable Retail Interior and Window Design?

Retail and in particular display design by its very nature is dynamic, idiosyncratic, ephemeral, and often de rigueur, while promoting innovation, inspiration and creating aspiration (at least in some cases). It can also be inordinate, and if used incorrectly vapid or pointless. In our contemporary society there is no real excuse nonetheless for not combining retail display design innovation with concern for the environment. I don’t for a minute believe that its just a case of creating sustainable retail displays in a vaguely sustainable market but perhaps the notion of sustainability is misunderstood or maybe ignored within this area of design? Perhaps we need to look to accommodate retail display design in the overall design vision rather than in isolation? I would never suggest that marketeers or accountants have a tighter grip on the development of concepts, I think we are already living with those consequences and I can feel my toes curling as I type at the mere suggestion. However surely there is a way of being creative within this industry and yet sustainable?
Consumer culture may have solved a lot of social problems through such things as ‘health’ products and better life styles but as we all know this has come at an environmentally high price. Retail display design can have a unique role in providing solutions which could address the problem rather than act as a sticky plaster covering up the environmental wounds that may lay behind a retailer’s lack of responsibility? I am not suggesting that we all rush out to design a ‘Green Theme’, ‘Eco Window’ or create props from old tyres and toilet paper. We need to have a far more in depth look at what we are doing and develop a strategy to deal with this instead of a strategy not to deal with this problem, abandoning a surface approach to simply ‘appear’ to be concerned as no one is fooled anyway – however something is better than nothing. I am not suggesting that we revert back to wax or plaster mannequins for example, these were extremely heavy, impractical and the wax of course was made from paraffin – Oil based. Does anyone ever consider Soya wax mannequins (at least in part) or vegetable dye printed graphics on recycled cardboard or paper may have possibilities? Of course Display Design is only one small albeit crucial cog in the retail and design world but it does nonetheless need a sustainability philosophy to be a part of this, which at least to my knowledge is only being explored in a limited way. Retail display design should not only be something used to create a higher profit or be something that creates differentiation or maintains a competitive advantage but surely should and can also be something that is sustainable? I am not convinced that the retail display design industry is so insular, elitist or simply obsessed with its own image and attitude as it requires us to be focused, have a greater understanding of culture and trends, be multi skilled and think in a holistic way – even if we are not supposed or allowed to depending who you work for of course. We all know good retail display design is good business, communicates additional messages to the consumer, promotes choice and brand identification, facilitates sales and of course is part of the shopping experience. However what type of materials are wasted in this process unnecessarily? What type of materials are being used in this process when we could use something else? Cost reduction in retail display design and of the designers themselves seems perpetual, however perhaps a far more healthy philosophy would be to consider how retail organisations can increase budgets and contribute to sustainability instead? We are increasingly breeding a new type of customer who will scrutinise everything we do in retail design for its environmental impact and sustainability. It may at this stage be a Utopian dream where nothing is ever wasted but we will have to find new ways to create our 'selling receptacles' eventually with this in mind. We do now need to create design displays that meet the needs of our current designers without compromising the needs of those designers of the future. I have probably asked more questions than I have answered, however it does seem to me at least to be an area that is currently very much over looked? You may know otherwise?
In the mean time if you don’t want your old materials, props, fixtures or mannequins, can I have them for my students please? I will be around on my band wagon in the morning – carbon neutral of course.

Developing a more informed creative process

Creativity is a very personal quality and naturally differs in each of us. The creative talent of the individuals working within retail organisations can help to drive them [the organisations] creatively forward and indeed forward creatively. There are of course many ways we can adopt creative processes that may include Brainstorming exercises, Lateral thinking, random word association, journey techniques etc. and each retailer will no doubt have adopted its own working methods. This may also include the perhaps unhealthier and far less creative approach of the ‘silo’ method, i.e. working in isolation of anyone and anything else.
We may all feel that other retailers and especially design teams are more creative than us, but perhaps this is a good indication of the differing approaches to being creative and how this may or may not be encouraged or supported within our own commercial organisations? I do believe we all have the capability to be creative whether this is nurture or nature of course there are an awful lot of theories ‘out there’ debating this. What influences creativity is something that I am particularly interested in and how creative processes can be developed that will inform the future of design, therefore providing a ‘better’ creative output whether on the High Street, in store, or within the out of town mega-monolithic contemporary retail emporiums perpetually under construction.
Perhaps the first stage that needs to be addressed is to identify where the problems are. This needs to be clear otherwise the strategy will be confusing. Secondly, investigation of initial ideas and concepts needs to take place perhaps through brainstorming and including all of the Design team.
One of the techniques that I use is a journey technique. On a recent trip to Rome with my students I issued some of them with a disposable camera. They had to resist the temptation of taking photographs of each other and focus more on abstract images found on their journey. I initially took them from Termini station (the main station in Rome) walking them to the Coliseum. Leaving them at the Coliseum they handed over all of their maps and I asked them to begin to navigate their way through the city back to the hotel situated near to Termini station following signs and anything that they remembered that was of significance on their walk from the main station. I also gave the group a list of words which included energy, flexible, focus, texture, signage, graphics, metamorphosis, space, identity etc. to keep in their minds while they recorded their images.
The quality of the images were by no means not perfect, however this was not important, the ideas and what they were recording was far more pertinent and potent. The below illustrates just two of the groups’ journeys recorded in no more than thirty exposures, some had less.

The third stage is idea and concept development. How can this be done? Essentially what the students had produced were a series of what I call cognitive maps, however they were acquiring knowledge without realising what they were doing or why they were doing it. From a Design perspective what this exercise did achieve was the creation of a visual diary that encouraged the students to look at the vast resources around and available to them and encouraging them to investigate primary resources rather than relying on Internet search engines or other secondary resources such as magazines that they were later able to draw on as inspiration for future projects and therefore designing far more informed solutions to Design problems.
The work environment of course needs to be considerate of the importance of this process. An uninspiring, aggressive environment can only illustrate its effects with lower productivity (whether creative or not) both physically and mentally. Improved creative output within the Design departments with the adoption of creative processes will benefit whole teams but do need to be adopted and used frequently to ensure that they are at the forefront of our minds when a problem needs to be solved. Retailers ultimately of course will have to decide whether they employ naturally creative employees or look to develop existing employees and utilising the creative processes available to them. Finally, I do sincerely believe that encouraging and supporting environments which have more people with more ideas who are able to express these is surely integral to greater innovation within Design, and an energetic and far more successful retailer with satisfied customers?

The Infinite Digital Revolution?

There are a wealth of publications celebrating Visual Commercial Design’s rich history and place in visual culture. I cannot find any publications however which discuss the implications of the digital market on this area that may raise questions about the future of Visual Commercial Design. I don’t wish to lament the end of Commercial Design (after all it hasn’t happened) but without the constraint of shelf space in physical retail and the unending late nights installing intricate windows how can a true picture of how it effects the customer demands be revealed? There is a wealth of research in to the value of this part of Design but to understand the wider perspective it is perhaps necessary to look at the general subject of Design itself?

Interestingly as a self confessed online shopper myself I am therefore (apparently) ‘goal’ orientated and often know what I want or need and therefore try to avoid the distractions from sales staff and marketing – although this is a terrible confession for someone so passionate about shopping and Retail Interior design not to enjoy the experiential process, however I do tend to go ‘shopping’ just for the retail experience rather than necessarily the purchasing of a product experience, finding what I want, testing, trying etc. and purchase it when I get home online, maybe it’s a male trait?
However there are usually so many products jostling for attention, that creating a defining image that slices through competitors is of course so crucially important. We are massively over stimulated visually every day and perhaps gradually we are all becoming far more discerning in our purchases or maybe simply anaesthetised to the multifarious aesthetics? However what seems clear is that Commercial Design has yet to cross over (in its conventional sense) to the digital media and therefore perhaps not as central as it could be to the visual culture of the digital version of the brand unless of course the brand in question has a particular graphic package and that it flows through the whole brand package but that’s just transferring an image in a variety of forms and very easy to do.

It is of course ever more important that brands have a strong visual identity because it is the way in which at least in some part that we define ourselves, however what does seem to be missing at the moment are display design concepts – I say this in the traditional sense of display rather than a graphic package placed in a window. How can this cross over into the digital media using ‘traditional’ display design techniques with mannequins, props, narrative concepts etc.? Digital technology is beginning to make retail store display stores themselves appear antiquated or jaded much like going to the Circus or Zoo became and therefore there is evolving an interesting juxtaposition of traditional and modern forms of experience with no (at least not yet) obvious solution?
What is so interesting therefore is that so few brands are following through their concepts from their stores and store windows into the digital arena, almost as if they are completely unrelated personalities or separate departments are working in different parts of a building somewhere and no one is talking, I am not sure. Perhaps we just haven’t discovered or perhaps the technology hasn’t yet been developed to allow us to translate three-dimensional concepts convincingly into the digital arena?
How then do we capture traditional store windows and the experience of these enviroments that flows through to an online presence?
I am thinking of, for example seeing a musician play live and buying their music on line, the emphasis perhaps is on the showmanship? Ultimately we still seem to be competing between the virtual world and the actual one and perhaps we need to begin to find solutions to this?

Seizure - Blue Crystal Interior Installation

Just a stones throw away from my campus at Elephant and Castle I had heard of that a new Art Installation called ‘Seizure’ that had opened just around the corner. Being curious I wanted to see what all the excitement was about I made my way to Harper Road, just along the New Kent Road to see Roger Hiorns latest project. The day was a typical grey London Autumn / Winter day which added to the feeling of desolation to the area that is surrounded with post-war housing estates, a secondary school and a park.
Walking into a type of Cour d'Honneur that was surrounded with boarded up low rise apartments we arrived on site. At one end of the block a queue had formed. After waiting for a few minutes in an opposite derelict empty apartment with metal grills, a smashed bath and patterned wallpaper peeling from the walls, we were issued with gloves and changed into rubber boots before making our way across the Cour d'Honneur to an opposite apartment.

The whole interior space of a couple of rooms (bedroom and bathroom) had been stripped and secured with a steel reinforced tank and liquid slow cooling copper sulphate solution poured in and left for two weeks. What was so extraordinary and such an interesting contradiction was how incredibly depressing the apartments were and then suddenly you are presented with this ‘oasis’ or artists refuge. I couldn't help wonder who had lived in the space prior to the installation and how possibly ‘loaded’ it was with emotions. Could someone have been born there? Did someone at some point die there? The emotional narratives of these spaces always creep into my mind.
The crystals had formed from floor to ceiling covering every inch of the horizontal and vertical planes. The floor was quite uneven and tidal ridges had formed and boot prints marked the floor. The remaining lighting had enormous crystals hanging from them and after squeezing through the crystal encrusted walls into the bath room the outline of the bath could be seen although I did suddenly feel that I would have liked to have seen more of these encrusted forms such as furniture that may have been left in the space, however the space was stunning.
Proceeding back to return my boots and gloves in the opposite derelict apartment, what I did find particularly interested is how the buildings reflect each other in size and space and in some way become a kind of before and after, although of course this was probably never the intention. However, how could we learn from this artist in developing our own concepts within Interior Design? What other applications could it have? How could this concept be translated into workable environment?

The images below are of the bathrooms in the 'Seizure' apartment and the reflected apartment opposite.

Why have Retail Standards?

You may well be looking forward to a Summer holiday, perhaps travelling somewhere exotic – I say this bearing in mind that although being based in London as I write this, that London can be exotic to many travellers especially if you are not experiencing such a currently cold climate and yearn for one? Anyway, with this in mind imagine you begin your journey. Bags are packed, journey to the airport was easy, flight was comfortable and then you arrive at the hotel. This ‘exotic’ place that you may have looked forward to visiting for months and travelled hours to get to is surrounded by a building site; maybe your hotel has not actually been built? OK well that’s an extreme example. Incidentally isn't it is amazing how carefully hotel rooms are photographed from very flattering angles and naturally only the best suite can be viewed on-line? Imagine the disappointment.... maybe you feel the disappointment right now? Maybe, like me you have been in this situation? I once stayed with a colleague in a Hotel room that had no windows, well it did have one window but it faced onto the communal staircase with a very short burgundy velour curtain and we slept shoulder to shoulder in a ‘double’ bed with an electric fan whirring above us having take it in turns throughout the night to burn incense sticks to keep the mosquito's coming through the holes in the ceiling and the electrics buzzing all night would have had 'Health and Safety' going mad.
Once you get over the hotel shock, deciding not to stay but then staying anyway because its such a nightmare to move, you are tired and getting your money back is more hassle than its worth.
You decide perhaps to journey to the beach, your perhaps expecting this.........

and you get this? (this is real)

Or perhaps take in some culture? You're expecting this.......

and you get this? (this is real too)

How would you feel now?
Imagine your customer. They arrive at your store. Maybe they had travelled across the country, perhaps across the world, not necessarily to shop with you but perhaps visit you are on their journey. Your customer approaches your store and sees the following?

How does your customer feel now?

Your customer may not initially see all of your faults directly. Perhaps they don’t even notice that your mannequins have their hands on the wrong arms or even think that merchandise crammed into a window is a sign of a desperate retailer etc. However, these are a ‘red rag’ and clear indicator of a retailer who doesn't care? Perhaps staff are unhelpful, or perhaps they are helpful but the environment looks untidy. This to me usually means they are desperate for your cash but the merchandise is not worth the money?

So why have retail standards and what does this include??

Store maintenance: Anything broken should be fixed or removed. Leaking ceilings and missing lights should be repaired or replaced

Replenishment of merchandise: Merchandise should be replenished but never so much that it is unshoppable.

House keeping: All areas should be kept clean and tidy, this also reduces the amount of damaged goods.

Staff appearance: Staff do not always have to wear smart uniforms however they should perhaps be clean and perhaps wearing some of the merchandise. This also shows a customer how to 'wear' something.

Health and Safety: Provides the customer and employees with a clean and safe environment in which to work or shop.

Whats wrong in the picture below?

Creating Visually Stimulating Environments

The sense of journey from private spaces to public places and on to private / public retail spaces has always held a fascination for me. Where do people meet before they go shopping? Why do we go to a particular store and not another? What makes things sell? What first attracts us to a brand? Of course a whole plethora of research, theories, theories of the theories, research of the theories and so on exists to answer these questions and indeed many more. There does however remain an emotional response to these journeys, a kind of there-are-some-emotions-which-have-no-words scenario that particularly interests me.

When designing, producing commercial spaces or installing a visual merchandising concept, for example it can be particularly easy to apply motifs or plagiarise by lifting from already established and published imagery, however I encourage my students to look beyond these and apply a much deeper level of research and thinking through unravelling their initial ideas before applying them into the commercial spaces that they design.

During a period of research of public art in 1992 I first came across the Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India. This of course was pre-internet days where ease of access to such information took hours pouring over documents and publications in libraries. It was a another 11 years before my first visit to Chandigarh at the foot of the Himalayas on a round trip from New Delhi, taking several hours by car driving on the bumpy roads of Rajasthan and the Punjab. Indians are particularly proud of Chandigarh, which is probably the greenest city – in the sense of landscape rather than recycling – in the whole of India and the Rock Garden the most visited place in India after the Taj Mahal.
Built by Nek Chand beginning in the early 1950’s in a clearing of the woods on the edge of 'Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh' and new vision of urban planning. Chand created an ‘illegal’ oasis from found objects that include broken crockery, bangles, light sockets and stones, creating an inspirational and fascinating environment. Paths of polished rounded stones and walls completely covered in broken cups and plates guide you through the spaces. Rounded doorways so low that you have to bend down to pass through – apparently to ensure that you bow to the ever present ‘Gods’ to then be greeted by ‘Sculptured terraces’ of strangely shaped animals covered with coloured bangles, an abstract concrete forms applied to surfaces.
What does the all have to do with commercial space design you may well be asking yourself? Certainly Chand was uneducated and influences of the great masters of Art and Design were completely unknown to him and therefore perhaps he was in that respect ‘untainted’ by these influences. However what he seems to have done is to create a visually stimulating environment from an emotional response in its purest form and from which we can learn a great deal when working in a retail environment and creating our exciting commercial spaces. While I do not suggest that everyone cover the walls of their 'spaces' in broken electrical sockets or crockery from the home ware department or create mystical creatures from found objects – these kind of things only really work well in the environments in which they were discovered and of course that would be plagiarism and applying the motif, for me at least, this should be avoided at all cost. We could therefore look perhaps holistically at how Chand created such a variety of different environments through the use of different materials, water, shapes, spaces, forms and repetition of these. Of course there is no electrical lighting deftly creating highlights in this environment, no obvious focal points or hovering sales assistants and no obvious attempt to sell you a product (after all there are none, but that is an interesting concept in itself) What he does do is take you on a journey through spaces each one completely different and yet seamlessly joined. What would be interesting to see is how we can use the essence of what he achieved as inspiration not through the obvious routes of merely covering objects in mosaics and planting them a store window but perhaps scratch a little deeper and take our customers on a journey of experience and excitement.
There are of course plenty of examples of retailers already doing this out there, else where or at least somewhere, but as standardisation of retail environments, mega superstructured shopping malls becomes ever more prevalent I do fear for the future of these exciting journeys to and through retail spaces and the creation of visually stimulating environments within them.