Jury Comment
Dust is a complex and experimental retail project that sets a precedent for concept development and is evidence of concept integrity from online experience to physical experience. The designers have created a space that celebrates the experimental journey, taking the user beyond a typical retail encounter into an immersive, sensory engagement. Courageous in its approach, the interior experiments with notions of infinite expansion and challenging visual immersion. The project elevates traditional values of retail design to a new level.
Design Statement
Dust is a multi-sensory concept store that is inspired by the brand’s sigil, the golden ratio, and a brief that encourages users to question their understanding of Cartesian space. Sibling uses these principles as the primary structuring devices: grids within grids, disturbing mirrored reflections, luminescent surfaces, spatial sound and animated screens. The brief called for an exploration of Dust’s core interests: a physical experience for its digital print on demand operation and a celebration of sensory practices. Sibling’s design for the first physical Dust store represents Dust’s DNA, and through this, becomes an immutable example of the inextricable link between design and experience. Unlike typical retail spaces, the Dust space broadens the user experience so that those in it becomes more than a mere consumer – they are a participant immersed in the space and its mode of operation. The space offers a complex and challenging new aesthetic and by re-using an existing basement shell, the design introduces a layering of new materiality while accentuating some of the space’s existing features, such as the original ceiling and exposed structures.
The Premier Award for Australian Interior Design is supported by Forbo Flooring Systems. The Australian Interior Design Awards are presented by the Design Institute of Australia, Diversified Communications Australia and Artichoke magazine. For more images of this project, see the Australian Interior Design Awards gallery.
