Challenge: Pop-up Retail Store

Oct 2011

By Kelly Minner — Filed under: Architecture News ,Competitions ,Featured , DesignByMany

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DesignByMany‘s latest challenge: Pop-up Retail Store sponsored by HP and media partners ArchDaily. For new Fall fashions and back-to-school shopping, ‘pop-up’ retail shops are the hottest trend. These small, temporary shops are bringing fashion and an urban edge to under-utilized and vacant spaces. This challenge is to design a quickly constructed or prefabricated, free-standing shop of no more than 200 square feet.

DesignByMany is a challenge based design technology community where users post challenges to the community along with their design source files. The community can then post responses with their own source files to solve the challenge. They can also comment on the challenge and interact with other designers throughout the process.

Context

*Flat-ground, appropriate for a vacant lot, parking lot, or park setting.
*Location and design should be appropriate for selling goods. We are looking for a workable concept so permitting/legal vending issues need not be considered, drawing in foot traffic and visibility should be.
*Location should be selected by the designer. Please specify a location, or locations, as the basis for your analysis

Objectives

*Provide no more than 200 square feet of product display and sales space.
*Store should be easy to set up and tear down for one season or product line.
*Store may connect to a certain product type or theme. (i.e. shoes, shirts sunglasses, etc..?) or theme (i.e. football fan gear near a pitch).
*Design should lock up at night.
*Design should be adaptable to various environmental conditions.

Prizes

*HP Designjet T790 24” PostScript ePrinter – The winner of this challenge selected by the judges will take home the latest in technical printing technology. The HP Designjet T790 ePrinter offers plug-and-play large-format printing, helping architects and designers achieve great prints without a hassle.
*Both the winner selected by the judges and the community winner will be featured on ArchDaily, The world’s most visited architecture website.

Precedent

*Pop-up Stores Rise in Popularity
*Trendwatching.com – Pop-up Retail
*Uniqlo Cube

Judges

*TBA

Deadline (*New Dates)

*All Designs must be submitted by Sunday October 23rd at 11:59 PM (GMT -4)
Community Voting will end on Sunday October 30th at 11:59 PM (GMT -4)

*Community voting is based on the total number of votes a project gets

Submission Requirements

*Post design model and documentation (3d and/or 2d)
*Post images
*Post diagrams explaining approach (optional)
*Post video explaining approach (optional)

Cite:
Minner , Kelly . "Challenge: Pop-up Retail Store" 09 Oct 2011. ArchDaily. Accessed 24 May 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/175076>

Comments (33)
Tweets (14)
Links to this entry (1)

James says:

Boycott this obscenity of a “competition.”

Meg Whitman, the new CEO of HP could afford to buy 50 of the printers that are supposed to constitute the “prize” in this sham every morning for a year.

HP is getting free architectural services, saving 10′s of thousands of dollars by getting people to do for free the work an architectural firm charges for.

Then HP’s internal retail department will take the free designs and construct their own pop-up stores.

All for the price of a printer.

This is the most obscene thing I’ve ever seen in architecture and people should boycott it, boycott Meg Whitman and her company, and boycott ArchDaily if necessary.

During an economic crisis, the forum that’s supposed to serve the architectural community teams up with anti-worker rightwing pseudo-politicians to steal ideas from the architectural community for the price of a printer?!!!??

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Everyone involved with this blasphemy should be on the unemployment line tomorrow.

# October 9, 2011 at 23:20

James 2 says:

So you’re not happy ?? :)

# October 9, 2011 at 23:38

Randy says:

Put up some links to prove what you`re claiming, otherwise chill, dude.

# October 9, 2011 at 23:42

Warut says:

Agree with that,archdaily should set up competition for now urgent crisis around the world.

# October 9, 2011 at 23:45

Actually, since you`re terribly misinformed and I`m bored, I`ll explain why your rant has no meaning. 1. HP has stated that they are getting out of the PC part of the business. So what are they going to sell in these little cubicles? 2. If they do keep making printers, etc., no one in their right mind would leave expensive property in a plastic cube in a parking lot overnight. Wow, did Meg Whitman bite your dog or something?

# October 9, 2011 at 23:56

Are you paid by HP or just being obtuse for the fun of it?

HP does pop-up stands all over the country. Their internal department is fishing. It’s not unusual for big companies like HP to try to get these sorts of ideas from designers for free, it’s just entirely corrupt.

As for one everyday use for pop-up stands, I would think America would at least know how office supplies are purchased by companies by now – The Office has been on the air for almost a decade.

HP will always have uses for pop up store designs, whether for conferences, trade shows, retail environments, etc.

Don’t try and play obtuse.

# October 10, 2011 at 00:04

Whatever. It`s a cool idea.

# October 9, 2011 at 23:41

As they say on the internet: Proof or GTFO. Show some links to that drivel.

Eric says:

James is right. If any of you have ever complained about how architects are undervalued, please take the time to think about this. The sponsor gets to mine the best ideas from our whole profession and only has to pay a fraction of what’s been produced. If you want to be a creative, productive architect, do not give away your services. Curb your ego and stop trying to be the next starchitect. Remember that a good idea will always be a valuable thing and believe that the benefits of design are worth at least as much as they cost to make.

For a better explanation, please read “Down Detour Road: An Architect In Search of Practice”. I cannot recommend this book enough!

# October 10, 2011 at 01:03

“The best ideas of our whole profession”?? I doubt I.M.Pei will be sending in a design, lol. Please, guys, it`s a simple competition with a paltry “reward”. You`re seriously underestimating the intelligence of the same people you`re trying to “protect”. Take a deep breath and relax.

# October 10, 2011 at 01:10

konk says:

what a suspense!!

# October 10, 2011 at 03:29

Valod says:

triangles are obtuse, not people. the heck that even mean?

# October 10, 2011 at 15:41

Valod, there’s a thing called a “dictionary.” In it you can find definitions for common words like “obtuse.”

It may come as a surprise to you, but words in this thing called a dictionary often have more than one definition. Shocking I know, but yes… it’s true.

# October 10, 2011 at 16:01

Is there one there for a$$hole, and is your picture beside it?

# October 10, 2011 at 16:56

Your behavior is helping me prove I’m on the right side of all this.

# October 10, 2011 at 22:15

David Fano says:

Dave here from DesignByMany. For the record, we (CASE) came up with the design brief; our partners/sponsors had nothing to do with it. We thought it would be a cool small design objective, and with so much happening around pop-up stores, we thought it made sense. The reason we give out prizes is to help get activity going.

Part of the idea behind DesignByMany is to get people working together and trying new things. Generally design competitions result in private submissions that the design community cannot benefit from. Part of the effort at DesignByMany is to have people post source files so everyone can download them and ideally learn from or “riff” off of them.

If you’ve had the chance to read any of our Practice 2.0 articles (http://www.archdaily.com/tag/practice-2-0) you will notice that we are ALL for empowering architects and helping push the profession forward. I hope that helps clear things up. And as always, this is a conversation, so please keep it going.

# October 10, 2011 at 16:28

Thank you for clearing the air. Pretty much what I thought.

# October 10, 2011 at 16:57

It’s easy to say you believe in “pushing the profession forward,” much harder to actually do it right in real life. Too many temptations, whether they be in the profession or in groups tangential to the profession.

Here, I think you’re probably a smart guy. I think you probably get it at some level. I bet you even have the right politics, given some of the things you’re saying about sharing.

But here’s a hint. Next time if you find you’re working with Meg Whitman, that’s the point when your radar perks up and you’re on the lookout for red flags.

There are a lot of firms out there who actually get paid to do pop-up store designs for these companies.

We’d love to hire people, if we only had work for them to do.

When groups like DesignByMany starts eating into that potential work with competitions teamed up with corporate sponsors (like Meg’s company), that’s work we can’t hire and pay actual people to do.

I wouldn’t mind what you’re doing so much if the payoff for the winner of this thing was as substantial as HP can afford to pay. A printer is just pretty offensive and it’s a really BAD precedent for “pushing the profession forward” if this is the direction you’re talking about pushing it. One printer for all this design? That’s a really bad direction.

And yes, competitions are one thing. But competitions with companies like HP are something else, especially when they’re in regard to something HP’s internal department needs: ie ideas.

The problem with this particular attempt is that it’s a little shortsighted, and I think you got carried away when HP offered to team up with you.

Maybe you jumped too early at the offer (one printer), maybe you didn’t stop long enough to think this out.

But I would beg…

All those out there who get it, those who know what side of the labor/economy issue Meg Whitman is on and which side architects and pro-architecture organizations need to get on…

let’s think bigger.

Steve Jobs encouraged us to be foolish, but we’ve gotta be foolish like a fox if the architecture profession is going to win back our standard of living from people like Meg Whitman who’d take it all for free if she could.

# October 10, 2011 at 22:01

You obviously have some personal beef with Meg Whitman. I would suggest you find some way of resolving that instead of posting idiocy about a competition.

# October 10, 2011 at 23:09

Whitman’s no more personal to me than any big conservative CEO who tries to steal from their workers (and young unemployed designers) to pad the bloated wallets of their shareholders.

I’d recommend you quit stalking me if you want to make an argument about people not taking things personally. As it is, you’re creepy.

# October 11, 2011 at 01:15

“Creepy” What are you, five years old? You started this deranged rant, I replied. Every erratic utterance you`ve made has had her name mentioned, that`s why I asked. Defensive, much? I`m a regular ArchDaily reader, every evening, in fact. You`re the first actual troll I`ve seen here, too bad you won`t leave. When you stop your inane blatherings, I will stop responding. Simple, yes?

# October 11, 2011 at 02:22

Stalker.

If you want to make comments, make them in your own thread and leave me and the people who agree with me alone.

Stop stalking me, weird nightly Archdaily reader creep.

# October 11, 2011 at 02:59

Randy B says:

1. Nobody is agreeing with you here. 2. This isn`t a “thread”, it`s a comments section of an article. 3. Isn`t school in session and aren`t you up past your bedtime?

# October 11, 2011 at 03:03

1. That’s not what the posters above have said. They do in fact agree with me and have said so.

2. A thread in a blog comments section starts with each original comment and goes from there. That’s why your petty responses are indented below my originals.

Stop stalking me, creepy weirdo.

PS, are you Randy Brown, the architect who writes whiny blog articles here on this website and who tried to blame Obama for the economic meltdown that occurred in ’08 before he was even in office? And if so, do you have the courage to admit it?

# October 11, 2011 at 19:45

1. One person agreed and has been thumbed-down. 2. No such things as threads in comments sections, just forums. Think about it. 3. No I`m not, I approve of President Obama. 4. Does your mommy know you`re posting here?

# October 11, 2011 at 19:54

1. You’re being childish. Warut agreed and got 2 thumbs up. You already know all this.

2. If there were no threads, there would be no indention and no option to reply to a specific comment. Don’t blame me if you don’t know what a thread is.

3. I’m guessing your courage failed you, Randy Brown. I’d advise ArchDaily to look into you and make sure. People who exhibit your behavior should be out of work, not writing for the website.

# October 11, 2011 at 20:00

Warut wasn`t agreeing with you, Eric was. Read much? No clue who Randy Brown is, another personal hangup like Meg Whitman for you, I guess. Tired of arguing with a kid, the point was made.

# October 11, 2011 at 21:05

“Warut: Agree with that,archdaily should set…”

So let me get this straight, now you’re stalking someone you believe is a kid? And using the sort of language you’ve used? With a kid?

Yup, creepy.

It really doesn’t help your case any more than the fact that you somehow found a way to make a universally beloved character like The Dude look creepy in your image there.

# October 11, 2011 at 22:39