‘Sustainability & Responsibility Are The DNA Of Design'

Ashish Deshpande, Director, Elephant Design, tells VM&RD why sustainability is the essence of store design and explains with an example how it can be realistically made part of a store design project.

How do you define sustainability in the context of retail design?

Answer to sustainability in retail lies in the ability of the effort to survive scale, time & connect with the customers. Sustainability is not a new concept. Every retail business has known this for the last 200 years or even more. Those who survived followed it and those who did not were lost in the quantum of time. Stores like Maratha Cooperative in Mumbai or Macy’s in the US of A, survived over a century purely because they were able to sustain their relevance and engagement with customers. Store elements were always opitimal and met up with aspirations of the customers. These stores big or small, stretched the rupee, dollar or pound invested, across decades. That to me is sustainability in retail.

Good sustainable retail is the one that is optimum in terms of elements and use of material, is locally sourced & serviced, predominantly uses natural light & climate control, supports business with value to remain relevant to customers over years.

It lends itself to evolution over time, behaving current without a neccessity to overhaul the core fabric of the store.

Sustainability & Responsibility are two core values that every designer must imbibe deep in her mind. It is the very DNA of every design exercise. Every other thought and function must revolve around these core values. Design has to be sustainable. Even a pop-up store would align to these core values.

Can you share a recent example of store design where sustainability as a design concept was used?

Classic Legends promoted Jawa Motorcycle stores are sustainable as a concept.