The United Kingdom’s Design Counsel offers a handy primer by Jeff Kindleysides on the emerging challenges of retail space design. If you simply replace the words ”retail” and ”stores” with ”cultural facilities,” you can cut right to the relevance for arts leaders.
Like every other built environment serving a social purpose these days, retail is running into complex dynamics between what customers want, and what their traditional business models require. Says the overview:
…the challenges are first in the understanding of consumers; deciphering and then interpreting a mix of needs and desires that create unique shopping experiences; then in satisfying the consumer’s expectation of an information-rich dialogue at retail, with a hunger for live interactive experiences. Balanced against this are demanding commercial realities and pressures to create a greater use of space, at a time where we are redefining of the role of a store and its importance for individual communities.
Particularly relevant to cultural facilities is this little nugget on providing a sense of belonging and place:
There is a growing trend towards local relevance and stores which are designed to demonstrate empathy with the local surroundings and recognise and respect local issues. This has manifested itself in many forms, from the sympathetic renovation of historic locations involving the local community in the process, to stores with dedicated spaces which are turned over to the local community after hours (Comme des Garcons does this in Glasgow), to celebrating the uniqueness of a city or town in which they trade within (Virgin Megastores did this in Manchester).
Does that effort for local relevance and empathy sound like your local major performing arts center, symphony space, or recital hall? Would you know one community cultural facility from another one in a different town? To what extent are your cultural facilities open and available to community use?
Glad to have folks in other industries exploring our challenges and offering solutions (in the form of ten examples of retail spaces working to innovate along these lines).
