Dust

Dust is a retail store driven by a client who has an obsession with the golden grid. This ancient grid can be found in weather patterns, seashells, snowflakes, plant growth and galaxy formations as well as the retail brand’s sigil. The golden grid is repeated throughout the 280 square-metre underground space as a structuring device for the brand’s physical experience of its digital print-on-demand operation. The grid can reflect the superiority of one’s mental construction over reality and generate complexity. But in Dust there is an optimistic approach to understanding Cartesian space where it can be accentuated, disrupted and personalised, such as by mirrored reflections, luminescent surfaces, fragrance dispensers, spatialised sound, LED screens and flexible display systems.

Dust houses a layering of digital and physical functions – a printing studio, a garment production zone, a stage for performance, a retail space, a place to hang and browse the digital catalogue. The juxtaposition of all these functions, as well as a brave new retail model – where the customer can order a custom printed garment online and instore and collect on site – start to break down traditional conceptions of bricks and mortar retail.

With the retail model moving to an online space, the design for Dust is wholly focused on user experience, actively attempting to draw a person in the space out of a typical day to day experience. All the senses are engaged seamlessly with the spatial outcome. Oversize mirror pivot doors in the changerooms are arranged to provide infinite reflections in the adjacent corridor, and for specific viewing angles for the user trying on garments. Through many mirrors, Dust broadens the user experience so that those in it becomes more than a mere consumer – they are a participant immersed in space.