New Non Architecture Competitions Open Call: BUYING - Alternative Design for Shops

The aim of the “Buying” competition is to develop design proposals for the shop typology, intended as a space – either material or immaterial – where goods or services are available to the public.

The participants are asked to create innovative and unconventional projects on this theme, questioning the very basis of the notion of the shop. In recent years, a series of new initiatives have emerged in relation to the shopping experience.

Take for example IKEA’s app that lets users see products in their own space before purchasing them, by integrating ar technology; or ASOS mobile app, where users upload photos of looks they like and receive suggestions for a selection of similar styles to buy instantly. Even grocery shopping has become effortless with home delivery, and actually, one of the biggest supermarkets in Britain has developed an app, through which shoppers can have up to 20 items delivered to their door within an hour.

Fueled by technology shopping has evolved in unanticipated ways, with the biggest trend across all sectors, the fragmentation of the buying journey. This means that digital and physical are constantly interconnected providing the customers with the maximum of information prior to purchase, which in turn renders them a lot more powerful in making their own purchasing decisions.

Besides the technological conveniences, more and more brands find ways to enhance the shopping experience in their physical stores, aiming to obtain value beyond their commercial use, like London’s House of vans, which opened a custom BMX and skatepark in the bottom of its flagship store, or Nordstrom local, the innovative “service hub” the fashion brand has launched in the US, that has no inventory, but a pick-up service, tailors, personal stylists, a shoe-repair shop, a barber and other services.

Within this context, with critical thinking and creative attitude, the participants are urged to investigate how the shopping experience can be reformed in the future, and respectively, how the concept of the shop as a space with material and immaterial characteristics can be reinvented. Designers are asked to create an artifact, merging considerable programmatic innovation and valuable design tools. The proposal can be a device, a piece of furniture, an interior design project, a pavilion, a building or an urban plan. Scale of intervention, program dimensions and location are not given, and they can be arranged by the participants to better suit their project.