New Apple Marina Bay Sands store simply screams innovation
Opening this Thursday, Apple’s Marina Bay Sands retailer in Singapore is an outright stunner. Resembling a lantern drifting on the water (it’s not actually floating) or a Buckminster Fuller-style geodesic dome, the store may be my preferred Apple Store style yet.
In a year where many of Apple’s focus has been on resuming shops shuttered by coronavirus, it’s a pointer of just how dazzling Apple Store design has actually consistently been. Examine out a few of the photos of the new retail website.
Apple’s “most ambitious” retail design yet
In its press release, Apple calls Apple Marina Bay Sands its “most enthusiastic retail task”. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed an Apple keynote will recognize with the business’s love of hyperbole. This store really is something extremely unique.
Here’s what Apple states in its marketing spiel:
“Totally surrounded by water, Apple Marina Bay Sands uses uninterrupted 360-degree scenic views of the city and its incredible horizon. The sphere is a first-of-its-kind, all-glass dome structure that is completely self-supported, made up of 114 pieces of glass with only 10 narrow vertical mullions for structural connection. As Apple’s third retail place in Singapore, the brand-new shop develops an extraordinary area for consumers.
An oculus at the apex of the dome provides a flooding ray of light, with custom sunshade rings lining the interior glass. Motivated by the Pantheon in Rome, an oculus located at the peak of the dome provides a flooding ray of light that takes a trip through the area. The interior of the glass is lined with custom-made baffles, each uniquely formed to counter sun angles and offer a nighttime lighting impact. With trees lining the interior of the dome, the green garden city of Singapore flows into the store, offering extra shading and soft shadows through the foliage.”
Exposing the Apple design procedure
Style speak-heavy? Sure. It’s fascinating to check out the thought procedure that led to the style. For all its reputation as a style company, Apple does not really open up all that frequently about this part of the creative procedure.
Sure, you get the odd book like. Keynotes drip with words like “stunning,” “gorgeous” and the rest. However for the many part Apple just drops new styles into the world and lets everyone analyze them on their own. The description is usually done by 3rd parties with no inside understanding about Apple’s design procedure.
For me, all of it enhances the idea that Apple Stores play by their own guidelines when it pertains to design. For a long time now, Apple has been focused on style convergence in its products. With smooth “black mirror” glass, unibody aluminum and slimline bezels, Apple products all look the exact same. That’s not always a bad thing: it adds a style consistency across every product that makes everything Apple recognizably Apple, while also encouraging familiarity as clients move from one item to another. However this, by requirement, implies less individualization.Apple Stores have taken a fascinatingly different method to style. Apple Stores are familiar in some methods. There’s the I.M. Pei-inspired drifting glass staircase. There’s the Genius Bar, the wood tables, the”Today at Apple “sessions, and so on. But there is also a lot of customization. Thinking different about design In some cases
, Apple does not have a choice. If it
‘s repurposing an existing building in a neighborhood, Apple needs to work with what’s readily available. When it opens flagship stores in high end communities, it looks for the very best locations and the finest buildings to work with. Apple’s Champs-Élysées store couldn’t extremely well have torn out the vintage splendour of its Haussmann-era apartment, dating back to the 1800s. Nor would Apple have actually wanted to.But a lot of the time Apple isn’t repurposing an existing historical building. It’s producing something
from scratch– and what it produces is frequently noticeably various. Apple could easily choose one flagship style and have it in every major city when it does a newbuild. It does not.
It creates interesting variations on a theme; taking design components we connect with Apple (great deals of glass, for one thing )and after that adding local flourishes. It commissions local artists to paint murals. It incorporates local building products and trees. And it borrows from regional iconography to produce something that harmonizes the surroundings. Anyone old enough to remember computer system stores before the Apple Store will remember the soul-crushing, out-of-town storage facilities that were chain computer system stores during
the 1990s. Apple Stores permanently altered that, the method the iPhone reshaped the phone market. Seeing designs like the new Apple Marina Bay Sands is a tip of simply how innovative Apple (and its architects)continue to be.Want to see evidence that Apple continues to”believe different”in 2020? Look no more. What’s your favorite Apple Store style? Let us understand your ideas in the remarks listed below.