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IRDC Blog: Small Box, Big City

Large format’s new urban digs

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It’s no secret that the traditionally suburban big box is going urban and getting smaller as retailers develop stores in city cores. These new “small box” designs are responding to the physical parameters of these locales with a re-definition of the experience of shopping at a “big” box. Here are some of the design elements getting a makeover:

Multiple levels

Smaller building footprints mean stores with multiple floors. So that big-box interior perspective that we’ve come to know – the long, football field expanse that allows shoppers take in everything from office supplies to health & beauty – is being supplanted by several shorter perspectives, offering tighter vignettes of fewer categories and less (but more demographically targeted) SKUs.

Tighter merchandise focus

Shoppers in a downtown core – who are more likely on foot, on public transit or on their lunch break – are more apt to buy groceries and other grab-n-go items than a new bookcase. In this new box format, the first floor may feature only groceries and prepared foods, for an urban pantry identity at street level, while other consumer goods (clothing, household items) will be found on floors 2 and 3. Both urban and suburban boxes' coordinated merchandising strategies will retain a consistent brand feel while offering goods that appeal to each audience’s needs and their varying modes of transportation.

Engaging with the street

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Today, the interior of large-format stores is largely self-referential, with few windows to orient consumers to the outside parking lot. But new city boxes will incorporate fenestration to not only let daylight in, but to convert passersby into window shoppers. This reactivates retail’s waxed-upon relationship between subject and object, between consumer and consumer good, for this new setting.

New interior treatments

Multiple floors also mean lower ceiling heights. Designers are addressing this by looking for alternatives to the grid of acoustic tiles 18 feet up. You can look forward to more active ceiling planes that work to direct consumer attention to focused merchandise stories. One wayfinding treatment of note: Floating ceiling planes with a distinct lighting treatment can provide shoppers with a sense of direction and act as consistent nodes on each floor at the escalator or the cashwrap. And a new take on windows includes floor-to-ceiling glazing with a ceiling plane that stops a few feet short of the curtain wall. This allows shoppers a peek at the window continuing through to the floor above.

For more on these design strategies, including new branding and geographic strategies, attend the IRDC panel discussion, “Recalibration by Design: Retail’s Rebound,” in September. For more information, visit www.irdconline.com.

Brian Fleener is a senior principal with MulvannyG2 Architecture (Bellevue, Wash.), which is currently working to create the City Target in downtown Seattle.

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