Does downtown shopping have a future?

by | Jun 6, 2012

Here is a reallly good article on the “Death and Life of Downtown Shopping Districts.”  It is worth a read for anyone interested in retail  store design.

Unbranding the Brand II: The Strategy of No Brand

by | Jun 4, 2012

      This Effort by Starbucks describes a store design problem that is related too, but not exactly the same as “unbranding.” It is telling us that the market is saturated and cannot support the same shop over and over again. My idea of...

Unbranding the Brand, Part I: Finding Main Street Retail

by | May 21, 2012

At the AIA convention this week I attended an event entitled:  Bathesda Row a Retrospective Look at a Retail Icon.  For anyone not familiar with it, Bethesda Row it is a highly successful mixed use development project that took place over 17 or so years.  It is a...

Expert Decision Making

by | May 4, 2012

<►>Night Maximizing the visibility of an unshaded East facing exterior storefront for a business that has both day and night time traffic is an undeniable design challenge.  This one is successful because of some expert decision making.  Someone decided to...