UNStudio has designed two new stores for one of China’s leading mobile phone brands, OPPO, with interactive and ‘Instagrammable’ features incorporated to create a unique customer experience.
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’.
UNStudio’s founder and principal architect Ben van Berkel said: “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.”
UNStudio Designs Flagship Stores for China’s OPPO
©CreatAR Images
©CreatAR Images
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 into the stores.
The interior of the Guangzhou store is designed as a ‘borderless’ interactive environment, where meandering routes lead visitors through an array of ‘display zones’. The 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 store also provide 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.
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.
In Guangzhou, we also designed the store’s facade, which needed to provide a bold and recognisable visual identity. As a result, a sliced extruded tube component was chosen as the main feature, inspired by bamboo - an important source of food, clothing, housing, and transportation for people in Guangzhou in ancient times.
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’.