AIRMIX lifestyle concept store

AIRMIX is a lifestyle trend-retail chain originating in the ancient city of Xi'an. This 240-square-meter store is located in Qujiang Creative Valley, the most trend-oriented district of Xi'an; as the brand's first store, it carries the heavy responsibility of opening and setting the tone for the brand. The primary challenge was how, within a relatively small space, to create a strong, memorable brand image for a brand-new startup. SpActrum, through an analysis of lifestyle products, extracted the bubble as a sensory and symbolic concept, using the physical properties of bubbles as a formal operation tool to create symbolic sculptural displays that act as organizers of space and circulation, supplemented by a giant transparent logo facade, shaping a highly recognizable store image while also exploring how interior design can activate street and city space, drawing people out of everyday routine and stimulating artistic imagination, thereby reinterpreting the meaning and boundaries of lifestyle retail. Formal concept: the idea of the bubble comes from a metaphor, a symbolic object. The designer asks about the essence of lifestyle products, usually seen as secondary needs arising after abundance. From the perspective of biological evolution, however, beauty is largely tied to sexual selection and the recognition of living environments; traits that favor survival and species continuation gradually become important components of aesthetic feeling. Long skies and white clouds, the muscles and mane of a lion, the leaping courtship dance of birds: beauty has extraordinary meaning for life. SpActrum lead designer Pan Yan found that the soap bubble is an excellent metaphor for lifestyle products: a bubble brings seemingly short-lived beauty and pleasure, but the desire to blow another bubble is continuous. Bubbles are beautiful and fragile; once they vanish, people are motivated to quickly create them again. Taking the bubble as the entry point, SpActrum does not treat it merely as an image but tries to understand and analyze the laws of bubble form and use them as formal operation tools. Design elements: a bubble, standing alone or stacked, changes from a circle under surface tension into a form composed of upright bubble walls and rounded arches, a physical forming process. SpActrum imagines several giant spheres stacked in the air, constrained by the store space and mutually cutting. Spheres together with upright planes form strong, sharp forms between flat and curved surfaces. The formal possibilities brought by formal operation are fully explored here; through analysis of space and circulation, the form occurs in four ways. The bubble altar: a large upright wall occupies the main wall of the store, with upright side walls and vaulted top, combined with specially designed overhead skylight, producing a deep, complete experience and serving as the main body of the whole space. On both sides of the altar, remnants of bubble spheres combined with upright plates form flag-like sculptural forms. These two sculptures contrast sharply with the stable, complete altar and are themselves full of contradictions: curved versus planar, vertical versus horizontal, thin thickness versus huge form, a light tall standing object carrying the weight of horizontal display counters. The immediate visual impact conflicts with the habitual impression of gravity and thickness; this conflict is the source of aesthetic tension, breaking from conventional thinking and stimulating aesthetic pleasure. Imagine a giant sphere suspended above the storefront, only its bottom locally contained within the shop, a path cutting through its middle, with fragrances of various scents arranged along its edge, and an aromatic journey begins.