UNStudio designs two new stores for OPPO

UNStudio has completed a new super flagship store in Guangzhou, as well as a prominent new store in Beijing for OPPO – one of China’s leading mobile phone brands and one of the world’s leading smart device manufacturers and innovators...

In line with OPPO’s forward-thinking move to upgrade their brand, UNStudio’s offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong were tasked with introducing a new customer experience that starts from the shops’ exterior facades into the retail interiors. For OPPO as a brand, the stores reflect a new identity for the company in these thriving cities; a visual branding that goes beyond the products and expands the meaning of the ‘OPPO experience’.

Ben van Berkel: “What we find particularly interesting about these special smaller-scale projects is that you can first really investigate the client’s products, their design aesthetics and technology, and discover ways to reinterpret these qualities into the craft of architecture. This is what we did at UNStudio Asia for OPPO. We re-crafted their information technology aesthetics into the facade, the furniture and the finishes.”

Since completion, the super flagship store in Guangzhou has been shortlisted for the Designers Institute of New Zealand’s ‘Best Design Awards’ and A’ Design’s ‘Best of Year Award’.

©Yiyi and OPPO

Oppo Guangzhou
With its 300m2 new facade, the 606m2 OPPO Guangzhou Super Flagship Store is located at Zhengjia Plaza in the Tianhe district of Guangzhou.

©Yiyi and OPPO

For OPPO, it was essential that the design for the store reflect the philosophy of the brand, while aligning to the company’s existing design ethos. As such, a total brand experience had to be created for the customers that was highly tailored to OPPO.

©Yiyi and OPPO

The aim was to create a design that would become an integral and recognisable part of OPPO’s overall branding and a valued experience that OPPO’s customers will want to engage with and return to. For OPPO customers, existing and new, the newly designed Guangzhou store provides a venue where they can familiarise themselves with - and get excited about – OPPO’s products.

©CreatAR Images

Design concept - Urban Park
Guangzhou is a wonderful mix of a historical and a modern, forward-looking city. The challenge of designing an OPPO store within this city is to develop a contextual reaction and strategy that respects the qualities of the city, while also representing OPPO’s brand values.

©Yiyi and OPPO

With the ambition to create a gathering space that blurs the boundaries between public space and commerce for OPPO’s customers, UNStudio introduced an ‘Urban Park’ concept. This concept creates an inclusive environment that meets the behavioral needs of the various people who visit the store.

©CreatAR Images

The interior is designed as a ‘borderless’ interactive environment, where meandering routes lead visitors through an array of ‘display zones’, thereby creating different rhythms of motion and allowing customers to browse, take their time, pause and try out the products within the store.

©CreatAR Images

The Facade – the modular tube
The design for the Guangzhou OPPO flagship store is approached through a keen focus on craftsmanship, alongside material choices that add a contemporary twist to the vernacular architecture of the city.

©CreatAR Images

Situated along a main thoroughfare, the facade design needed to provide the store with a bold and recognizable visual identity. As a result, a sliced extruded tube component was chosen as the main module, inspired by bamboo - an important source of food, clothing, housing, and transportation for people in Guangzhou in ancient times.

©Yiyi and OPPO

This metallic tube is also a 3D interpretation of the ‘O’ in OPPO. This dimensional transformation results in a cylindrical tube, into which a cut is added in order to obtain a truncated cylinder. This cylindrical form is repeated in varying lengths and curvatures throughout the facade, creating a reference to both the brand and to technology.

©CreatAR Images

For the overall composition of the facade elements, multiple geometric strategies were studied. Following the exploration of different volumetric options, a large, sweeping folding gesture was chosen which echoes the corner curve of the OPPO brand logo, while guiding visitors towards the entrance to the store.

©CreatAR Images

Programmable lighting embedded within each tube create an overall facade effect of dynamism and vibrancy. The result is an optical rhythmic motion across the facade, representing the new OPPO culture, new technologies and the elevated pulse of OPPO as a company experiencing continuous growth and progress.

©CreatAR Images

The Interior – Fluid, continuous geometry
Achieving a fluid space in a flowing, uninterrupted movement - where an intuitive sequence of different areas enables customers to experience and interact with the products - was one of the key aims of the interior design.

©Yiyi and OPPO

The interior space is defined by two main experiential zones: PULSE and EVOLUTION. In the PULSE area the main phone displays act as a strong focal point, while the EVOLUTION areas, in contrast, enable different experiences and accommodate social and interactive zones.

The winding circulation paths weave visitors through these zones, and along targeted seating that provide comfortable areas for customers to charge their phones, test new products, and socialise.

The store also provides customers with a playful ‘instagrammable’ experience zone, where they are also encouraged to discover the features of the phone’s cameras by taking photos and selfies.

The accentuation of fluid forms with natural wood in a muted palette articulate the interior. Silver anodized aluminum panels juxtapose the rippled translucent glass screens and wall of acrylic prisms. The result is a constant play on perception of subtly layered changes of depth throughout the interior, and balance between solid and transparent, heavy and light, cold and warm.

White terrazzo embedded with speckles of ‘Oppo green’ create the meandering paths through the store, while integrated ‘pathways’ of lighting in the ceiling mimic this fluid flow and frame the different areas and displays from above. These pathways in the floor and ceiling further serve to guide visitors intuitively along various routes as they wander through and around the space.

OPPO Guangzhou:

UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Hannes Pfau, Garett Hwang

With

Alexander Meyers, Ana Castaingts Gomez, Piao Liu, Jing Xu, Idil Kantarci, Diego Ramirez Leon, Praneet Verma

Advisors

Local Design Institute: DOP Design
Installation & Exhibition: Leaping Creative
Lighting: brandston partnership inc.(BPI)

OPPO Beijing
UNStudio was invited to carry over the same design DNA to the prominent new Wangfujing Avenue OPPO store in Beijing. The Beijing store has a total area of 428m2, spread over two floors. This division is made visible to passersby by means of a fully glazed, double height facade.

©Chenming and OPPO

In alignment with the Guangzhou Super Flagship, the ambition of the design for the Beijing store was to express ‘Beauty through Technology’. In Beijing, the ‘Urban Park’ remains the driving concept, while a sculptured staircase provides a distinctive feature within the store. This staircase links the two floors of the store in a continuous flow that becomes part of the customer journey.

©Chenming and OPPO

To counteract the relatively narrow dimensions of the store, and to increase visibility, anodised aluminum panels, glass and mirror panels are used to create reflection and the illusion of depth in the space. To maintain the brand consistency, Terrazzo flooring and the backlit ceiling are carried through from the design of the flagship store in Guangzhou.

©Chenming and OPPO

The staircase serves as a social and experience zone, while the device displays continue on the second level, leading to the repair zone.

©Chenming and OPPO

©Chenming and OPPO

On the ground floor, a long, self-supporting, monolithic table serves as a display for the various smart devices, while accessories are displayed along glass and aluminium shelving that lines the wall.

© OPPO

OPPO Beijing

UNStudio: Ben van Berkel, Hannes Pfau, Garett Hwang

With

Alexander Meyers, Ana Castaingts Gomez, Piao Liu, Jonghoon Kim, Idil Kantarci, Diego Ramirez Leon, Pragya Vashisht

Advisors
Local Design Institute: DOP Design
Installation & Exhibition: Leaping Creative
Lighting: brandston partnership inc.(BPI)

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