Trends in Retail Design: Simplicity, Monumental and Internal Regularity

Trends in Retail Design: Simplicity, Monumentality, and Internal Regularity

April 1, 2019

by Jonathan Novak, Director of Design

Leading design firms have been challenging the notion of eclecticism in retail architecture for quite some time. Eclecticism is the idea that retail design needs to create a false urbanism or ‘Main Street USA’ appeal. Certainly making an articulate urban experience for shoppers has its merits but making the retail experience into a menagerie of facades has become formulaic and diminished retail architecture’s potential in the field. By breaking up the exterior into what appears as diverse smaller buildings cheapens the idea that an architectural work is a singular artistic idea. Instead, designers are creating more signature collections of buildings with greater architectural appeal.

Creating an Authentic In-line Shopping Center

October 5, 2018

Lessons from Golden Gate Plaza by Jonathan Novak, Director of Design

In-line shopping centers have entered a new, third generation of design that reinvents their modern roots while creating humane architecture. The first generation of in-line shopping centers was the strip mall. Based on late 1960s modernist ideas of flexibility, it sought the ability to put tenants in any location. It had a pure, raw functionalism that made it a successful retail prototype. The second generation began in the 1990s with a post-modernization of the strip mall. New malls promoted kitschy aesthetics designed to humanize the ubiquitous strip. Replicas of traditional motifs such as pediments, cornices, and mansard roofs were deployed to bring articulation back to sterile architecture. This approach, while being a valid critique of the original strip mall, is now seen as disingenuous and lacks authenticity. Today, the third generation of strip mall accepts the post-modern critique of the strip mall while embracing the purity of their original design intent. The hybridization of these ideas, authenticity, and articulation, is the driving idea behind contemporary in-line mall design and remodels today.

Onyx Creative Wins at 2017 NAIOP Awards

May 25, 2017

Onyx Creative was honored to have received two awards from the 2017 NAIOP Awards of Excellence. The prototype design for Kate Hudson’s Fabletics was awarded “Retail Interior Design of the Year” and Park Village Shopping Center was awarded “Retail Architectural Design of the Year.” The awards were received by Fred Margulies, Director of Retail Architecture, and Jonathan Novak, Director of Design.

Park Village Shopping Center, Southlake, TX

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