iPhone Mania: an Arbitrary and Capricious Design

iPhone Mania: an Arbitrary and Capricious Design

From the news online, the flagship Apple store in Shanghai opened with a small bang on July 10; after Beijing, this is the second Apple store in China.

Shown interviewed on TV, a young couple from the north-eastern region of China had scrambled for their early arrival so as to be the first in line for the opening inauguration. A week or two later, another woman celebrity anonymous to me was there for some events with the long fan line trailing around and scattering securities before the celebrity arrived.

Along the way to the Superbrand Mall shopping for grocery, I swung by to snoop around the newly inaugurated store. Ironically, neither any computer related products nor any iPhones were central to my principal vanity fix or visual feast. I popped in to check out the design and environment of the store. I succeeded, of course, with some pleasurable scoop with the help of instantaneous camera shots later to be uploaded online. Sure enough, these shots when recently uploaded onto Facebook had attracted some keen eyes for its design or for general interest of the newly marketed Apple products.

This particular Apple store seems to round up the general mood or reflecting the ongoing arbitrary and capricious design trend of China. This arbitrary and capricious design tendency is nothing new. This has been going around and a tea time aloof but hot topics since I arrived in this town in 2004. The concern has since waned or subsided over this half decade; guess all is immune or oblivious to its intrinsic fickleness.

Most designers and those in related fields have had been expressing deep exasperation over the design products in general with regards to the timely China opening up, and to name a few its eddy effects, its global economic status and competitiveness, its branding as well as national pride.

Though appeared organized, there seems to be a freewheeling whiplash or completely not bashful splashing of Apple advertisements, of course, its products and by-products. The attempt to a gallant design of a generously bestowed sunken space turned out to be capricious and fickle in architectural experience. Its application of various interior materials, hence, reflecting only subliminal sense of coloration and ambience, specifically speaking, was explosively fragmented.

Aiming at its larger volume and younger generation of consumers, the interior ironically appears conservative but slaphappy or lighthearted. There was way too excessive variety of materials used that led to mismatching in colors, in texture and in material sizes as well. Together with its very loud appearance, it is some deliberate and strategic mind to attract the huge appetite of curious crowd for new products but shooing them all to move on like cattle after some minimal time of interactive play with the various displayed products.

The spatial linkage was weak for functional zonings indeed not well defined or clearly demarcated; one would swoop around without sensing entering into another spatial zones. There is an utter ignorance towards the existential concern of psychological and social impact due to these mix and match spaces. They are casually jumbled together.

Lighting and furnishing did not come through as comfortably warm and hospitable. Few stools, some area none at all, or any comfortable sofa were available and one has to opt for the low marble parapet ringing around bottom of the translucent staircase landing zone.

The overall design, however, resulted to be irrationally flighty: little focal points or inconspicuous functional zonings, paying less attention to major or minor functional demarcation but functional uses all lumped in together. It is very obvious that when arriving, descending the well done spirally staircase, moving around, ascending again and leaving the premise, the spatial experience was quite dogmatic in design principles, nothing very confounding about it.

Ensuing, one would realize that this was rather weird or quirky in spatial experience. In fact, critically speaking, the design was reckless, half-baked and harebrained. As the freelance interior designer Gabrielle Liew of Kuala Lumpur keenly observed through reading photographs, nothing ever matched. The initial motive for a sensational design is now revealed and reduced to be a monotonous cliché; the Apple store is arbitrary and capricious in its design.

I did return for the third time when thinking about the platinum gray lap-top baggage worthy for up to four days of traveling loads. The baggage was tagged RMB700 something. Due to its rather pragmatic use, I am still toying to pick it up should there be excess cash flow.

Jeremy

Shanghai upon the Sea

July 22, 2010