Image Credit : Photography: Camila Schalscha
Project Overview
A sub-brand born from Aje, Aje Athletica offers consciously designed, performance-enhancing active and leisure wear through the lens of a fashion house.
The store honours the traditional wellness apothecary with contemporary innovation and the dynamic movement-based ideals of the sports and leisure wear sector. The most important approach is that Aje Athletica stores are modest but have an elevated aesthetic, always favouring contemporary, uncomplicated design.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Design: NORTH+NORTH
Project Lead: Joseph Grieco
Documentation: Vivian Chan
Builder/shopfitter: ATRU Group
Electrical: Astech Electrical Services
Render: That's The Finish
Light designers: Light Brokers
Fixtures: IA Hardware
Project Brief
The design in its purest form was to mirror the product itself, with the overlying theme of combining science + nature. Which in turn formed the finishes palette:
Science + Nature
Human elements + Natural elements
Clean finishes + Texture
Rock + Metal
The shopfront continues the form of the interior, allowing the interior shape to inform the shopfront. Smaller pockets of visibility + entry into the store, populated using solid raw blocks as plinths to display mannequins with frameless glass visibility panels to allow transparency + lightness.
With sustainability a core principle of the brand, we will endeavour to utilise existing elements of the store to breathe new life into an existing fitout and save on waste + landfill.
Project Innovation/Need
The design addresses the store challenges of wait times in the store and the disconnect that can be felt with shoppers and in-store staff. The needs of the modern woman who would shop on her own, with friends, or with kids, the need to accommodate the diversity of the customer was something we had found to be lacking in other stores.
Large, Suspended fitting rooms, self-contained and luxurious with magnetic clips for maximum privacy and large enough to park a pram alongside you or to fit the waiting partner, were created.
The disconnect of staff rummaging through back of house while the customer waits in store was addressed with the addition of White product boxes on white gloss display shelving with easy access was developed with the Aje team, with the aim to reduce in-store waiting times for customers.
Design Challenge
The current athleisure market is consistent in its application of product display. Our brief was to showcase the product in a way that is different from everyone else and to focus more on the experience of the customer rather than volume of product.
Elevating the presentation as a point of difference was a key challenge for the concept.
Aje Athletica uses solid, raw anchors joined together with human-made elements to display products in store. Rails + Rocks for Athletica clothing with segmented metallic + concrete displays for counter products can symbolically represent the joining of Science + Nature.
Pushing Landlords to think outside the box in terms of shopfront design was made simple with an enthusiastic and helpful Westfield team who supported us along the way.
Sustainability
Aje Athletica was created with sustainability in mind - offering a range of eco-conscious products made from thoughtfully sourced and recycled materials. With the brand placing such importance to this principle, it was imperative for NORTH+NORTH to approach the fitout with the same conviction.
A key example of this was the deliberate choice to utilise the product boxes as a key element to the design rather than relying on adding additional features that create unnecessary waste. Made from 100% recycled materials, these boxes provide an ever-changing textural backdrop that strengthens the brand’s character and presence in the store whilst also serving a functional purpose.
The store itself has a very tightly curated list of materials - many of which are locally sourced such as the Australian-made render featured on the curved shopfront walls. This ensures our carbon footprint is minimised where possible as we let sustainability lead the way.
Interior Design - Retail
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes and aesthetic presentation. Consideration given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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