February 10th 2022 – By Promostyl

The New Camper Store in Hengshan Fang

The Hengshan Fang district of Shanghai has just welcomed a brand new Camper store and showroom that was designed by Schemata Architects. The three-story building consists of a retail space on the first floor, a showroom on the second floor, and an office space above. Having already designed a Camper store in Tokyo in 2017, the architects wanted to take inspiration from that interior and add the concept of "circularity" to it.

To achieve this goal, they used recycled and recyclable materials throughout the store. The ceilings and walls were intentionally left bare, to increase the flexibility of the space and allow for future rearrangement. The gridded metal displays, which create the illusion of shoes floating in the air, can be reconfigured for future use. The shelf tops were handcrafted from Camper shoe boxes and plywood was used in place of cork to create benches.

Reducing the store's footprint was a priority for Schemata, hence the furniture choice used. By creating an agile design and using recycled materials, the impact of redesigning the store in the future is reduced. A reduced aesthetic also eliminates unnecessary distractions throughout the retail experience, placing emphasis on the products displayed. One of the architects told us that a possible explanation for this trend-also seen in another Shanghai clothing store-is that it "seems to challenge the status quo in retail design, as stripped-down spaces allow for simplified spatial reconfiguration in the future".