Excerpt: X11 Toy Collection Store is a retail store designed by the interior design firm TOMO Design. X11 gives every flagship store a differentiated image, hoping to offer consumers an immersive shopping and socializing experience through exquisite spaces, display aesthetics, and storytelling circulations.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect] X11 and TOMO DESIGN are taking you back to the future. Set free the souls in an immersive setting. Create a new experience and resonance. X11, as a new, representative toy retail brand, is born to meet the spiritual needs of Gen Z. Nowadays, emerging commercial operations and consumer groups are breeding new commercial space.
A narrative, the immersive shopping experience is the key to capturing the new generation of consumers. X11 gives every flagship store a differentiated image, hoping to offer consumers an immersive shopping and socializing experience through exquisite spaces, display aesthetics, and storytelling circulations.
X11 flagship stores in Shanghai and Wuhan have successfully drawn tremendous attention and become a hit on social media. Recently, another new premise of X11 opened in the Mixc World in Xi’an. Conceived by TOMO DESIGN, this flagship store unfolds a distinct journey of exploring toy collections.
Its novel, trendy aesthetics stimulate the desire to share, refresh consumers’ interactive experience with the brand, and turn the retail space into an experiential storytelling field awash with emotions, atmosphere and rich layers. The retro-futuristic “airship” flies people to another dimension full of futuristic, synthwave and fantastic elements. How does the airship land?TOMO subtly made use of the original space and opened up the interior surfaces. The metal airship was set at the centre of the space, linking the upstairs and the downstairs.
In response, TOMO took advantage of the steel staircase and the skeleton structure of the airship, cleverly hiding firefighting equipment and air-conditioning and ensuring the perfect presence of the airship form. The airship installation gives the space a centripetal force. The cashier area is subtly arranged in the “cockpit” at the bottom of the airship, serving as a characteristic “magnetic dot” and a functional node of the circulation route. The hollow-out design and the lighting arrangements are exposed from the inside of the airship, attracting customers to step in and explore.
The connecting area between the floor slab of 2F and the head of the airship is formed by a crescent-shaped glass walkway, helping eliminate the boundary. TOMO refined the design rigorously and meticulously to realize an integrated form for the airship from top to bottom, thus creating an airship “float” in the air and rich walking experiences in the space. The full-height glass curtain wall provides an open view to the outside and reveals the interior full of infinite imagination.
The “X11” logo on the facade highlights the brand’s identity. The airship becomes the iconic symbol of the store, injects value into spatial scenes, and improves space utilization. By stepping into the space, people can experience the retro-futuristic, romantic vibe and the distinctive style. Various elements, such as twinkling red lighting, retro-style meter, a mechanical button, rolling and faulty screen, and old computer screen playing retro-futuristic brand advertisement, are injected with X11’s brand genes, bringing people back to sci-fi movies in the 1970s.
The slightly blunt steel shelves and the precise retro-style display stands create a familiar yet strange sci-fi scene. The sci-fi, cyber-style, bright light strips and the dotted red light arouse time-travelling, surreal feelings. Elaborate details endow the surreal dimension with a sense of reality. The sci-fi trend looks forward to the future. With the rise of retrospective, futuristic steampunk culture, airships have found their place in the sci-fi, mechanical universe.
As a Big Dumb Object (BDO), airships exist in the real world. X11 Airship carries beauty and fun, undefined and full of curiosity. It acts as a spiritual ark for Gen Z, enabling them to be immersed in the passion. A new wave of trend culture sets sail in the space.
Drawings
Images
