Up There Athletics

Building on our work for Up There’s fashion brand in Melbourne, we were interested in how the haptic qualities of entering a store could engage the interest of shoppers.  Our design started with a rubber soft-fall floor.  This surface immediately announces a shift via the sensory experience of walking on a slightly springy surface.  Of course there are connotations with athletics tracks, but also the sense of wearing new trainers signalled by the yield and bounce of the surface.

We chose a flat, dull olive green drenched across floor, walls and ceiling – a hue which provides a complex neutral backdrop to the unpredictable diversity of athletic gear, which is often starkly different with every drop of a collection.  Fixturing is dynamic and flexible with options for horizontal or angled shelving or rails, all of which can be moved around a grid of fluorescent red posts deployed in a grid across the main merchandising wall.  Literally running down the middle of the store are a series of cobalt blue mannequins mimic the acceleration of starting a race and overhead, lighting is provided by narrow strips suspended diagonally across the width of the room. 

Up There Athletics is a new hybrid in retail and so it’s appropriate that it is presented with an aesthetic and programmatic approach which gestures to this newness.  The store avoids tropes of the sport store, the palette is tertiary and low-key, lighting is warm and inclining to dim and it is a haptic experience rather than a visual statement, an emphasis on feeling the movement of a body through space.