Yan Yi Ha

UK Retail sales estimated value is £321 billion. Consumers are bombarded with choices, but how ethical and socially responsible these choices are is hard to know. The most profitable retail location in the UK is Oxford Street, where anticipated sales targets are expected to reach £6bn 2020. This design proposal is therefore situated in Oxford Street, where the largest number of sales transactions take place, and the biggest and most diverse international audience can be reached.

This design project proposes three key interventions – a connected system of concepts that allow consumers to aware, experience and participate the ethical shopping. The project is not intended as a protest or against retail, but instead a way of raising consciousness about consumers’ own responsibilities for the choices they make, in a way that creates spatial spectacles that raise individual awareness.

The first intervention is Story Pods which is public space to inform the ethical choice by mobileApp and to reflect on consumer's shopping options and encourage them to make more ethical choices on the oxford street. It makes awareness of ethical consumption.

The Second intervention is an Ethical Entrance for experience of ethical choice inserted into the façade of Nike Town, scans a chip embedded in the packaging of each purchase and playfully captures whether the customer has chosen are made from sustainable materials. 

The third intervention is a Repurpose Retail within the Benetton store to make participation of ethical consumption. It is redyed product store and natural dyeing workshop space to provide opportunities to customers ethical consumption and production. This allows Benetton to demonstrate its recent commitment to more ethical forms and manufacture and trade.

This project is not intended to solve the ethical problems of brands, but instead aims to provoke social awareness and offer antidotes to the ethically indifferent habits of today’s shopping culture. It gives key brands the chance to demonstrate their commitment to new ethical agendas through imaginative and playful interior design interventions.