Yabu Pushelberg wanted to give Beijing shoppers a taste of designer luxury shopping found in New York, Paris or Tokyo. The design team behind Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, MGM Mirage and Tiffany & Co.'s New York flagship turned its attention to the capital and created yet another architectural masterpiece.
The newest Lane Crawford Beijing store at the Seasons Place Shopping Center is a fusion of fashion, art and architecture.
The design team of Lane Crawford Beijing store: George Yabu (left) and Glenn Pushelberg.
Instead of having a traditional department store with windows of mannequins, shoppers walk into a dazzling glass and silver metal palace with whipped cream, sculptural white walls. Nothing is straight, it's all curved but linear.
A 16-m-high media wall is the highlight and allows customers to watch live runway shows from Milan, Paris and New York.
The Hong Kong-based luxury department store chain, Lane Crawford, invested $83 million on the 7,500-sq-m store, which boasts some 600 top-end brands including Stella McCartney, Emilio Pucci, Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Marni, Miu Miu and Givenchy.
"We aim to offer the newest in all aspects of retailing - new brands, new products, new retail concepts, new services," says Jennifer Woo, the retailer's president.
In an age when the shopping experience is going online, the architect placed technology at the forefront of the store's design.
And George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, the duo who run the Toronto's Yabu Pushelberg design company, are good at it.
The bond between Yabu Pushelberg and Lane Crawford began in 2004 when Woo commissioned them to design the Lane Crawford IFC store in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong store is made up of a series of gallery-like rooms, providing fluid spaces that showcase the expressions of individual designers.
A year later, Yabu Pushelberg returned to Hong Kong to work on an entirely different Lane Crawford at the Pacific Place using more interactive technology.
"We hope each Lane Crawford store has its own distinct personality and offers customers different retailing experiences. Yabu Pushelberg could always push the boundaries of store design and knows what we want," Woo says.
Therefore, when the Beijing store was to open, she called in Yabu Pushelberg again.
Working on their first project in Beijing, the dynamic duo initially focused on the cultural ethic of the capital. "I think the cultural element is a factor," says Yabu, the Japanese-Canadian designer.
The newest Lane Crawford Beijing store is a fusion of fashion, art and architecture.
"It's not the only factor but it's something you want to consider. So before we started the project, we traveled here several times to see, feel and meet people, and we did much homework.
"But you cannot see any literal or obvious influence or symbols of Beijing in the store.
"Today's Beijing is a global modern city and shares much contemporary culture and art with the whole world.
"Here you have the Nest, the Egg Shell and many other architecture works designed by foreigners.
"They do not look Chinese in traditional eyes, but they are Chinese. It's really showing that China has come of age and it's an international center like New York or London where all of the best talents come together but also respect the Chinese culture at the same time," Yabu explains.
To highlight the rise of Chinese art, the designers initiated an exhibition at the store called Visions of the Unexpected, featuring three Chinese contemporary artists' installation works.
Zeng Hao, 44, Shi Jinsong, 38 and Wang Peng, 43, use hard steel, scaffolding, glass, resin and wood to create works that make sense of the massive urban redevelopment programs in Beijing.
"Art is important in terms of our interior design that's what really makes it stand away from competition and it's also giving something back instead of just everything about consuming merchandise. It's also giving back something for the customer to experience," says Yabu.
"Lane Crawford brings a lot of brands to Beijing for the first time. So we try to make many designs less of an introduction and more to inform the shoppers about the latest trends that are happening abroad," says Yabu.
Woo says that what Yabu presents in the store is what Lane Crawford tries to provide customers.
Like many successful businesses, Yabu Pushelberg came from humble beginnings. Both studied interior design, and were casual friends at Toronto's Ryerson University in the mid-1970s.
But it was not until three years after graduation that they bumped into each other in the street while they were both looking for an office space. They decided to share a studio, thus the company was born in 1980.
The two have now collaborated on 700 design projects around the world, including theaters, retail spaces, offices and hotels.
"What we learned from designing hotels is creating a great experience where the customer says: 'I feel special. I feel I've arrived, I feel the sensuality to the space'.
"So learning how you put the composition of lighting, composition to lead things together and to create that in a really good hotel or restaurant space. We did that to retail," says the designer.
When asked what drives them to create spectacular spaces year after year, Pushelberg answers: "Insatiable curiosity and a fear of boredom."
"Natural curiosity compels us forward. Just from an individual to an industry, to me it's more than design that makes it interesting, how all the parts come together to make it work."
Now Yabu Purshelberg are starting Lane Crawford in Macao and then they hope that Woo will again commission them to work on the Lane Crawford in Shanghai.
"Shanghai's a natural place for Lane Crawford. The Shanghainese are forward thinking, everything has a snap to it and it's the perfect fit for Lane Crawford," says Pushelberg with excitement in eyes.
(China Daily November 24, 2007)
