Apple’s retail spaces share a common design theme with the products they sell — focusing on minimalist accents and a clean, easy-to-navigate design (barring the swarming hordes of customers). The new “prototype” store under construction in Palo Alto promises to draw on the best ideas from Apple’s decade in retail.
The new $US3.15 million storefront is being built just one block from the very first Apple Store and will borrow designs from other popular Apple outlets. The new two-story, 1390m² Palo Alto space will share the same curved-glass roof and other patented designs from the Upper West Side store. It will also employ a basement and rear mezzanine for storage and offices, a tactic used in numerous other stores. In fact, Apple has brought in the same architectural firm that created the iconic Covent Garden and Pudong stores to generate this one.
Moving forward, Apple wants to avoid single-layout, cookie-cutter store designs and instead focus on adapting each retail space to the specific site and environment in which they’re located. That’s a relief because as anyone who’s visited the store on Haight Street in San Francisco, white and glass everything occasionally sticks out like a sore thumb. [Mac News Network – Palo Alto photograph via Kirstina Sangsahachart/Daily News]