OUT OF FRAME

What do the founder of the Signa Group & owner of Galeria Kaufhof stores Rene Benko, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and meta-tech giant Mark Zuckerberg have in common? At first glance, you wouldn‘t recognise any overlap.

But when the city-centre architecture of Benko‘s Signa Group and Bezos‘ online shop meet Zuckerberg‘s Metaverse, the result is the potential of a virtual hybrid architecture. 

Retail is one of the main reasons for visiting a city centre, so it is important to find new concepts to keep city centres lively. This has also been the experience of department stores, which have made a third less turnover compared to 20 years ago and have revealedthemselves to be a non-viable business model, shutting down store after store.

Retail is one of the main reasons for visiting a city centre, so it is important to find new concepts to keep city centres lively. This has also been the experience of department stores, which have made a third less turnover compared to 20 years ago and have revealedthemselves to be a non-viable business model, shutting down store after store.

The metaverse is playing an increasingly important role here. Showrooms for brands, extended sales areas or even completely digital, immersive experiences with entirely digital goods such as video games are becoming more and more important when it comes to the word retail. However, the digital spate should not be underestimated: the forecast for the online share of retail sales for 2024 is 13.1%. Of this, 55% is expected to be generated via smartphones.

Offering a kind of trading centre by virtually overlaying and connecting three already closed department stores in order to be part of these record sales doesn‘t just sound like a distant and impossible dream, but an opportunity to be part of the metaverse. By integrating reality into the virtual, we can save existing structures and architecture from demolition and vacancy and at the same time offer new hotspots in the heart of the city. The constant interaction between users, reality and virtuality takes centre stage. The type of presentation is logically different to the one we are familiar with. Individual sales areas, superimpositions and liberation from the laws of physics speak in favour of virtual and immersive sales areas.