Benoy and the new face of retail

Courtesy of Dezeen.com

Future Cities Forum is looking at the new face of retail in our cities and towns at our forum in January 2018, to ask what local inhabitants, visitors and tourists really want as food and entertainment destinations - good restaurants, cinema, art galleries and museums or street theatre?

One practice of London-based and multi-award winning architects, master planners, interior and graphic designers, Benoy, which works in the capital and internationally, should know.

Benoy's team is acknowledged as experts in Retail Design and Planning working on some of the world's most prestigious and significant retail destinations. Benoy describes the sector as complex and fascinating but importantly, evolving and its work on Westfield London set a new benchmark for retail design across Europe. The £1.6 million scheme with 150,000 square meters of retail, leisure and food is celebrated as an architectural and commercial success for London.

Benoy has also been appointed to the Battersea Power Station renovation and regeneration project where this icon is being brought back to retain its importance in the London skyline. The firm's role as Retail Advisor covers ensuring that the retail provisions on the lower levels of this substantial residential project are viable and successful.

Appointed as the Interior Designer to the recently renovated Xinyuanhua Department Store, inside a former government compound, located close to the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, China, Benoy created the main art installation featured in the central atrium. Made of a series of suspended metal rings, the installation references, 'floating lotus leaves'.

The firm's design for the shopping centre, Prado in France has already won awards. Prado located in Marseille's 8th arrondissement will provide both the local community and visitors with a new shopping experience that is designed to integrate the adjacent city streets into a 'Grand Hall' around which the retail is planned over four levels. The central space is tiered with terraces and crowned with a restaurant deck, again modern in its translation of the standard shopping centre with an roofscape affording protection and open views across the city.

Benoy is now putting forward visualisations for a section of Hong Kong's harbour waterfront - known as Site 3 - which has the potential to deliver an iconic destination for the city. The firm says there needs to be connectivity and a rich mix of uses from alfresco dining to outdoor exercise parks. The government plans to sell the General Post Office in Central and demolish it for commercial development but Benoy has kept the landmark building in its designs.

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