RESELFRIDGES - a bespoke Accessories Destination with a Circular Ethos
World-famous department store, Selfridges, asked us to design RESELFRIDGES - a retail space that showcases a curated selection of pre-loved luxury accessories. It was important that the space encapsulated the RESELFRIDGES ethos; improving sustainability by minimising wasteful practices, whilst still reflecting the high-end luxury nature of the products on offer.
Retail fit-out is systemically damaging environmentally due to the pace of refit and churn; a process that leads to wasted resources and carbon. However, retailers also require new, fresh ideas and spaces to keep customers excited and engaged. Selfridges hired us because of our innovative ‘design for disassembly’ approach, which is grounded in the principles of the circular economy. Materials are selected from credible supply chains and fixed in such a way that their utility remains unimpaired for future uses.
The design strategy was to keep within the vernacular of the store, creating a clean, contemporary and elegant space that allowed the products themselves to shine. Every fixture and fitting required a level of thought and technical knowledge to create a luxury aesthetic that can easily be disassembled at the end of its use.
The fixtures are a ‘kit of parts’, held without the use of chemical adhesives and are primarily made of virgin materials that can be recycled at end of life. We used few screws, no glues and the fixtures are a framework to be re-clad, showcasing the latest closed loop, sustainable materials. This allows for future change and adjustment of the fixtures, while minimising wasted material through cradle-to-cradle closed loop manufacturing. The design of the fixtures is of the highest detail and quality, often working to 0.5mm tolerances to meet the demand of a luxury brand offering. This also ensures that the fixtures are built to the highest of quality and will stand the test of time and the rigours of the world’s most prominent department store.
Notable materials used include stainless steel, aluminium, glass and plastic boarding called Polygood made by a cradle-to-cradle manufacture based in Ukraine from post-industrial and post-consumer plastics, for example, a translucent product made from recycled CD cases and a decorative product made from industrial tubes. Italian interior cladding manufacture, Paper Factor, who’s boarding is predominantly made from recycled paper pulp and is available in a range of textures, colours and designs. We reimagined an aluminium railing system product by Kanya; a system more usually used in the manufacturing industries, using it for clothes railings and overhead gantries.
The RESELFRIDGES retail space is innovative in the respect that it sets out to create fittings that are future assets across the Selfridges estate, rather than churn items that are rendered obsolete by change of brand, trend or location. Contemporary responses to the question of sustainability are often centred around materials and carbon, and while this is important, the most critical point is that the fit-out industry is inherently throwaway and tied to fashion cycles that promote waste. ‘design for disassembly’ is about creating solutions of lasting relevance which are easy to repair, refurbish and reuse and can ultimately be recycled at the end of use.
Our view is that the design industry has contributed significantly to the environmental and social issues that have brought us to a crisis point. The problems we face are not material problems, they are design problems and so clients and retailers need help to develop systems that support businesses and create lasting measurable benefits. A common design industry pitfall is to find good quality regenerative materials and glue them to a substrate that destroys all of the benefits the material once had. This forces clients to refresh shop fits in their entirety which makes no sense environmentally, socially or economically.
By focusing on regenerative materials from credible sources, which are considerately and mechanically fixed, the RESELFRIDGES project has been designed to be reinvigorated to the highest quality, multiple times. The benefits are threefold; firstly, from a carbon perspective, a reused system uses between 75% and 80% less carbon, than a new shop fit. If this is done multiple times then the savings are enormous. Secondly, the RESELFRIDGES project drastically reduces material use enabling Selfridges to refurbish and reinvigorated the space, or even relocated the shop fit to another store if they wish. Finally, cost. By creating designs for reuse that retain quality, then the cost savings are huge. The CAPEX is drastically reduced; both store closure and timescales for refurbishment are reduced, maximising the retailer opportunity to generate revenue.
‘Designing for disassembly’ ensures that end of life is not a short period of time. By means of adaptation, relocation and customisation, the RESELFRIDGES system of fixtures can be reused, reimagined, relocated and then finally, at the very end of its life; recycled.