Project Overview

A premium showroom space with the largest range of Australia's trusted finishes and fixtures brands. Curated for individuals, home builders, architects and designers to select every finish and fixture for their home build - from outside to inside.

X+O’s response to the brief was to use the architecture of the showroom to create zones that reflect the layout of the home. Thus creating a relatable and inspiring context for clients to make their selections from. The zone layout mimics the construction phases of a home, guiding customers through the items that they need to select first - from exterior to interior. Customers are guided through each zone by a highly trained designer, equipped with digital tools to help select, visualise and record their selections.

Each display took cues from a real life element in the home – some of which include hero basins with a small bathroom display, hero bricks and doors on the façade for up-sell. The fixtures on the floor were cleverly designed to maximise capacity with pull out drawers and displays to create a dense multilayered effect. This enabled brands to show a large range of their product whilst highlighting hero product.

Project Commissioner

Thynk Group

Project Creator

X+O Pty Ltd

Project Brief

The brief:
- create a premium one stop location
- showcase over 45 trusted brands
- facilitate an end-to-end selection process for home builds, from outside to inside
- showroom, consultation and workspace
- exterior and interior finishes
- attract high calibre brands, some if them to become tenants with the available workspaces on site

The customer journey was broken down into zones, through the architecture and expert customer service, so that customers feel confident, not overwhelmed when making their selections.

Starting with the exterior, followed by the interior structures and finishing off with the outdoor lifestyle area, zones were named: exterior world, interior world and outdoor world. Customers are guided through each zone by a trained designer, equipped with digital tools to select, visualise and record selections.

Structures inside each zone were designed to act as a blank canvas allowing a variety of different brands to showcase and ‘hero’ products. Each area was designed with consistent structure and signage, like a department store, creating an easy to navigate environment.

A matrix of zones were developed to facilitate different product display. Some products required walls, others shelves or tables. Allocated based on site lines with tables at the front, and built up taller with walls in the back, sight lines were not obstructed. Careful space planning placed brands requiring a tenanted office on the outer perimeter with consultation areas / work spaces directly opposite their displays.

Project Innovation/Need

The project methodology brings new outcomes to the market as it was driven by the customer and business need – not purely aesthetics. Working closely with the client X+O developed extensive customer journey maps to drive the design solution and space planning. An overwhelming process for most customers, the architecture was designed to break the journey into easy to digest zones to reduce pressure in the client during the selection process. A service design element was incorporated to complement the architecture – through the introduction of design and product experts and digital tools to guide the customer journey and for up-sell.

Strategies were incorporated to attract brands to display their products at Space By Thynk. These included dedicated high capacity displays with adjacent work spaces, hero product displays, and digital advertising screens. Resulting in commitments from the most well known and loved premium brands in Australia for display and tenanted space. Numerous trusted project home builders have also engaged Space by Thynk exclusively for the selection processes to their clients.

Digital tools incorporated to enhance the customer experience – e.g. digital make your own paint by Taubmans and personalised digital screens greeting clients. Phase 2 to include endless aisles, QR codes for products, CRM and augmentation tools for customers to visualise products in their homes.

Design Challenge

Capacity and navigation were the largest challenges with this project.

The client wanted Space by Thynk to showcase one of the largest ranges of brand and products available under one roof. The fixtures on the floor were cleverly designed to maximise capacity with pull out drawers and displays to create a dense multilayered effect. This enabled brands to show a large range of their product whilst highlighting hero product. Additional items were available digitally vis the allocated design consultants via an ‘endless aisles’ strategy.

Within each ‘world’ a matrix of zones were developed to facilitate different product displays, for example some products required walls, others shelves or tables. These were allocated based on site lines with tables at the front, and built up taller with walls in the back so that sight lines were not obstructed. With careful space planning, brands requiring a tenanted office were placed on the outer perimeter with consultation areas / work spaces directly opposite their displays.

Navigation was addressed through clever zoning and very thoughtful space planning. Utilising fixtures signage, floor finishes to define zones and a layout that reflected the construction stages of a house, starting from outside to inside, made it easier and more understandable for customers to navigate the journey and space. The zones made the journey feel less overwhelming as the selections were provided in segments – blocking out the remaining areas allowing customers to focus on one area at a time.

Sustainability

X+O approached this design solution by focusing on reducing waste by designing a flexible space for longevity.

By utilising the actual products on display in order to create the display where possible, over usage of un-necessary materials was enabled. This included using hero brick, façade claddings, windows etc to create walls and areas of display. Where possible, fixtures were designed to be moveable so that the showroom could be easily reconfigured rather than demolished each time a new product was incorporated. Similarly the display walls were all designed to be ‘neutral’ sand interchangeable so that categories could easily move around if needed without the need to embark on a full new construction, hence reducing future waste. All existing ceiling and flooring was left exposed, and new finishes applies only to aid navigation. Energy efficient lighting and low VOC and recycled materials were used throughout.