Design
X+Living and MINISO Have Jointly Conceived the New Paradigm of Future Retail

With its spatial narrative layout, immersive scene experience, and rich interactive elements, they have created an IP-themed amusement park, inviting everyone to break away from the monotony of daily life and experience the joy of MINISO LAND

MINISO LAND is located in the U479 shopping mall on Nanjing East Road - a three-storey high retail space, expanding bidirectionally along the building facade from the corner location to maximize the interface with the city and the crowd. This road is densely populated with commercial buildings on both sides and brands flowing like a stream, rapidly shuttling through the urban context, dazzling to the eye. 

X+Living occupies one’s visual focus with strong colours, injecting the familiar modern streets with unexpected colorful surprises and creating street art on the side for public consumption. The building facade directly declares the amusement park's liveliness and joy, bearing iconic character shapes of different IP, which quickly captures the attention of pedestrians from a distance. As they approach, a dream amusement park warmly embraces pedestrians. The park is a miniature world that integrates universal human values such as happiness, satisfaction, and hope, embodying high emotional resonance and identity. The designer abstracts the atmosphere and symbolic meaning of the amusement park, reconstructing a comprehensive platform in the retail space that integrates emotional communication, cultural experience, and brand value.

Stepping into the first floor is akin to jumping into a carnival park with an animated texture, where colours guide one's emotions. The designer translates the interspersed combination form of assembly toys into the shelf structure logic, using objects to imitate objects, weakening the utilitarian identity of traditional shelves, and giving them a more vivid and interesting form. Bright and lively color components are embedded to build exhibition stands and shelves with amusement facilities. 

Dolls and characters from different IP universes play amidst scenes such as ferris wheels, pirate ships, carousels, mini trains and more, as if presenting unaired spin-off episodes for people to enjoy. The designer has aspired to rethink the understanding and definition of functional facilities, re-establishing one’s emotional connections and value perceptions of products.

The blind box area gently lifts one’s joyous mood from the amusement park with a dreamy, pink colour hues, where soft bubbles fill the entire space. This area is designed with a forest-like progressive structure to create visual attraction, with layers of the forest stimulating people's desire to explore inside, and the pace of progress is layered. The edge contour of the space is softened, like whimsical ideas deforming in a dream. In addition to display, blind boxes can also be combined to construct fantasy worlds. 

The second-floor comprehensive area includes a variety of categorised retail, such as cultural and creative, beauty, personal care, home, travel, fashion, and pets. In terms of design technique, the designer draws on the characteristics of film montage and integrates them into the theory of architectural segmentation, ensuring the rich information in the space presents a logically coherent visual narrative. Different categories of display areas form a series of narratively different still images, and people can capture multiple consumption scenarios from various perspectives, which are then directed to different paths. Furthermore, the designer uses architectural planning techniques to segment linear passages, using oblique cuts and other methods to enhance the sense of contour and perspectives of the space. Bold colour attempts diminish traces of layout lines, creating a visual sense of stretching or compression, igniting one’s natural rhythm as they move through the space. Between partitions, by replicating camping scenes, a lifestyle scene where people gather and interact with each other is constructed

In the pet area, bright colour blocks have been used as the visual base, combined with black lines to outline the contours, giving the three-dimensional scene a two-dimensional plane animation texture. The exhibition stand is inspired by the design of cacti with different heights and shapes, interpreting the natural characteristics of plants as shelves, which not only uses space for display but also makes the entire room filled with visual interest. Conceived as a dreamy desert environment, the designer has cleverly stripped away the original stark loneliness of the desert and injected bright and vibrant hues and vitality into this fun retail space.

Entering the third floor, one’s entire field of vision is encompassed by the doll area, which is completely wrapped in a fluffy soft texture. The designer combines the lively aesthetic concept with the warm emotional value of dolls, aiming to touch the undisturbed imagination deep in the hearts of every visitor. The spatial layout adopts an open and immersive design concept, planning exhibition stands, displays, and moving lines to ensure that people can freely appreciate, touch, and interact, creating an emotionally progressive experience area.

Adjacent to this area, the fragrance room creates a romantic and fresh atmosphere with its transition from light green to light pink, and a bright, vibrant growth emerges in spring and summer, soothing and relaxing one's emotions, thereby making sensory experiences more acute and delicate. Various products are placed among the branches and leaves, creating a natural and harmonious display effect. The fragrance trial stand grows from the vine-like partition, where people can stop and experience. A row of gyroscopic exhibition stands are orderly arranged on the central axis, which not only plans the flow path but also ensures that no matter how people move, they can see and be attracted to something.

X+Living’s design aspires consumers to not only enjoy the fun of shopping but also feel the vitality, creativity, and affinity conveyed by the brand. When people step out from the amusement park to real life, the strong contrast further deepens the surreal sense of the space, strengthening the aesthetic tension. Through this inspiring space, it’s their hope to nourish commercial vitality and momentum with design.

Words: Sphere Editorial
Photos: SFAP
Published on November 28, 2024