Jonathan Ive is Apple’s Chief Design Officer, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Jony is responsible for all design at Apple, including the look and feel of Apple hardware, user interface, packaging, major architectural projects such as Apple Campus 2 and Apple’s retail stores, as well as new ideas and future initiatives.
“An Apple store with trees?” Jenny Xie reports for Curbed. “That seems unthinkable for the tech giant’s famously minimalist retail locations, yet it is the reality for the company’s new outpost in Brussels, Belgium, the first designed under newly-minted Chief Design Officer Jony Ive.”
“Talk of a new retail aesthetic has been swirling since around the Apple Watch release this past spring, particularly the thought that Apple Store 2.0 needs to be quieter, more luxurious, and appeal to more than just ‘Apple Dudes,'” Xie reports. “That’s beginning to happen with this new store.”
While still glassy and super streamlined, the interior emphasizes more natural finishes,” Xie reports. “This means clay-brick walls, wooden benches, wooden drawers and display mounts, and one large screen instead of many back-lit photo displays. And yes, eight real, breathing, (shedding ?!) potted trees.”
More info and photos in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The new guy or gal gets the rake.
Jony Ive must be stopped. It’s all just too much.
He must not be stopped, but I do not like the trees in Apple stores.
The concept is big open space, not to be tampered with trees. They do not fit in those clean spaces.
Trees must be stopped?
Are you insane?
The really big stores could use some open space well. The small stores are starving for open space. Meanwhile, there are thousands of small markets without Apple Stores.
Skeuomorphism is back!
These are real trees.
In a faux environment. How many trees you got at your place? Anybody?
Green is good.
Exactly! The detractors need to realize:
The wood will be used in Store 3.0
OTA Antennas can be demonstrated fixed to those trees.
Actually, the blending of surrounding elements with the clean lines of Apple is stunning. I, personally, think tree placement should be a little more “random” to truly blend the natural element. They should also, of course, be apple trees.
yes! the trees lined up as they are take away from what should be a naturalized element of the store. they might as well be artificial trees.
Well no, but I HAVE heard of it.
This isn’t the first Apple Store with trees. Perhaps the media should do some research before writing this nonsense.
I read the MDN title as “Unapologetically abhorred…” Was confused (and then amused). 🙂
Helpful advice for owners of Apple products is available at the Genius Hedge.
…at your local Apple branch. Or, just call teak support and leaf a message.
Um, uh: I don’t get why this is some sort of ‘new’ retail aesthetic. Malls have been inexplicably sticking potted trees all over the place for many decades. Stuffing them inside a store is just more of the same.
But I do like that they tree pots have wooden bench edges! That’s thoughtful. If somehow the trees actually reflect the environment outside of that store, then I can see the point. I expect that BIG screen will come in handy. That seems an inevitable addition.
I’m not sure it’s fair to blame Ive for ‘creating’ every single change we see in Apple’s designs. But he certainly provides approval of everything. I can and do certainly blame him for the simplicity-to-the-point-of-juvenile changes he made in OS X. But that bad idea may have been someone else’s.
Angela Ahrendts is cited as co-designer. It must be her, not oft-unfairly-maligned Jony Ive, who is responsible for this aesthetic outrage.
Trees absorb noise and help clean the air.
If I was to complain about the trees, I’d worry about them preventing people at one end of the store being able to see the new big screen at the other end of the story. Otherwise, I agree with you that they’re beneficial and fine. They just don’t equate to any sort of store decor innovation.
So do bathroom fans.
I like the trees! 😀
I’ve grown tired of the sterile Apple environment at their stores. Great products, overly enthusiastic ‘associates’ and a bleak, monotone, boring interior to gander at for 15-45 minutes as you wait for whatever.
It’s impressive the first couple of trips. The first couple of years. The first couple of times you take someone else there for their first time. Now it is just annoying.
Thank you for the trees. They can give a better perspective to dimension, break the monotonous full view, and kill at least a bit of that damnable constant roar of trained enthusiasm from the workers and giddiness from the buyers.
Apple doesn’t need the mystic dynamics anymore. They need the casual reality of success to be reflected. This is a small start.
Next we’ll be seeing saguaro cactuses in Arizona, sandlots in Ohio, slot machines in Nevada, and more! It’s exciting to think that the new Apple design milieu may engage local environmental themes in preference to the stifling anaesthetic of a uniform minimalist European tradition posing as a universal style. If retail chief Angela Ahrendts is true to her goal of creating community centres, the stores’ designs ought to reflect, in part, the demographic and social profile of the people who shop there…
What’s the big deal? There have been trees and plants and crap in shopping malls for decades.
I’m just wondering what happens in the fall?
It looks really splendid in that shot from the outside, breaking down the perceived insideoutside barrier.
Are they Apple Trees?
Ok.. I love trees and all but isn’t this just visual clutter in what is a clean tech retail evironment?
The big Apple Store in Sydney CBD is lauded by many. I find it a cold, soulless place with all its steel, glass and whiteness.
The odd tree wouldn’t go astray to bring some warmth, colour and ironically, humanise the place.
Are they at least Apple trees? Macintosh even?
sorry, Edmonte, did not see your post before I wrote the same!
What Apple Stores need more than anything else is something to reduce the deafening noise level when stores are busy—which is practically always.
The Apple Store in Bondi Junction, Sydney has real live growing trees and as far as I know they have been there for some time…