Green Envee recently teamed up with Scotscape to create an opulent interior for H&M’s Pleats Café in Westfield White City.
H&M has long been a trend setter in the world of fashion and now, with the introduction of Pleats, it seems that the store is helping to encourage instore sales by creating a more relaxing shopper experience.
The 2,400 square foot café incorporates a 15m2 green wall as well as trees and a rich array of living and artificial plants.
Velvet sofas, an intimate layout, and healthy, tasty food in lush vegetation creates a calming space which aims to improve wellbeing and allow customers to relax and gather their thoughts.
From the retailer’s point of view, helping shoppers to unwind increases browsing time. Which not only helps sales, it ensures that buyers make considered choices and are truly happy with their purchases.
The buzzword of the moment is “Biophilic”. Biophilic design uses vegetation, natural light, temperature control and views over nature to create great places to eat, work, shop and play.
It’s all about our innate need to connect with nature. We’ve known for a long time that hospital patients with a view over green scenery recover quicker than those who look onto boring buildings. We also know that the colour green is innately calming. Biophilic design takes that knowledge to the next degree. Bringing lush planting displays indoors creates a feeling of calmness, reduces stress enhances wellbeing and, when introduced to the workplace improves productivity and reduces sickleave.
Scotscape is a well-established name in green infrastructure. For the H&M project, the interior design team at Scotscape worked with Green Envee to provide artificial planting solutions that appear realistic but are not affected by artificial lighting, air conditioning and heating.
The two teams collaborated closely to source and install the perfect foliage for the client’s needs. Looking at the photographs and judging by the client’s reaction, I would say the project is a huge success.
Recent figures suggest that our high street shops are finding it more difficult to make sales. I’m sure there are a number of factors at work here, but could the H&M model of biophilic design help prop up ailing sales?
Green Envee and Scotscape have been chatting about this and we believe that shops need to be more savvy about presenting their products. Modern merchandising needs to offer a release from the stresses of everyday life by encouraging customers to slow down, touch products, feel their worth and yes, try things on. Imagine if fitting rooms had the same luxurious feel as a holiday destination.
Or if streets and boulevards were more like country lanes with trees, flowers and clever lighting to encourage browsing in shop windows. Could that affect shopper behaviour?
If you’ve been inspired by H&M’s example and would like to discuss biophilic design for your work space, get in touch with our design team and let’s have a chat.
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