SHOPPING - A REAL EXPERIENCE?

‘Going shopping’ is not a straightforward event anymore.

Look at these shops. Yes they really are shops! Leave your ‘normal’ life and enter a new world.  In fact it can be a fantasy experience.

This is the interior of Manderina Duck. A shop that specialises in upmarket travel luggage and classes itself as a 'destination shop'.  The first thing that hits you when entering the shop is a giant yellow backside and pair of legs that also has a sound system!!

Do you enter the land of the giants? Are you meant to feel this is your start to plan your escape to your fantasy holiday? The design is actually meant to simulate Gullivers Travels and encourages the mind into a play situation.  Whatever the reason for the design, reality is exaggerated and our minds can be distorted to adapt to a hyperreal situation.

A further example is the O2 shop which takes the hyperreality further with its futuristic space age look.

It is also redisigned throughout the year to simulate the season at that time.  Here it has been designed to make the consumer feel a winter mood with cracks and splits on the center belt to represent an icy surface.
Does this simulation even trick the mind into feeling temperature?
pictures taken from DESIGN FOR SHOPPING by SARA MANUELLI