With ice and snow sports emerging as a vibrant social and recreational trend among urban youth, STILL YOUNG crafts a “Future World” narrative at the DESCENTE flagship store in Harbour City, Hong Kong. This concept envisions a future icy and snowy realm while exploring the synergy between people and space, where synchronized acceleration and energetic resonance define a distinctive retail experience.
Inspired by DESCENTE’s skiing roots, the design establishes a new order, new language, and new civilization. It unfolds dynamic scenes of “unveiling a new snowy frontier – linking high-speed trajectories – embarking on a journey into a new civilization,” delivering a fresh experience of ice and snow sports.
1) New Order: Portal to the Future World
The design imagines a future world blanketed in snow and ice, which becomes a main stage of everyday life. Fueled by the trailblazing spirit of ice and snow sports and empowered by the brand’s cutting-edge technology, it inspires a passion for extreme sports while fostering an exploration of the synergy between technology and urban life. As high-speed trajectories synchronize, visitors enter a portal to a new civilization, discovering a breathtaking snowy and icy future world.
The brand name “DESCENTE” originates from the French word for “downhill.” Its iconic arrow logo, known as the “spirit mark”, represents the three essential skiing techniques: “schuss”, “traverse” and “sideslip.”
At the entrance, a sequence of dynamically sculpted diamond motifs sets the tone for a new spatial order, extending seamlessly onto the floor like strands of genetic sequences—accelerating the journey forward.
Inspired by the rhythm of motion afterimages, the entrance transforms into a gateway to DESCENTE’s world of tomorrow—a bridge to the future, seamlessly showcasing an ideal fusion of nature and technology.
The space unfolds with a pristine texture, icy tones, and mirrored technological imagery. Through multisensory design and artistic installations, it crafts an immersive atmosphere that instantly draws visitors into an otherworldly journey across time and space.
2) New Language: Linking the Trajectories of Ice and Snow Sports
The thrill of ice and snow sports lies in their speed and intensity, brimming with challenges and adventures that engage both body and mind. The store extracts the brand’s “ice and snow genes” as a unique design language, expressed through the interplay of pavings, lighting, lines, and furnishings, immersing visitors in the thrilling trajectory of gliding.
Spiritual Icon: The island installation at the women’s collection area features an ice-textured shell, appearing to freeze the internal mechanical movements. Here, snow and ice become a metaphor for the technological power of a future world.
The display area primarily showcases DESCENTE’s Dualis, Men’s, and Women’s collections. Subtle variations in material textures evoke distinct emotional experiences. The women’s collection section, for example, merges textile textures with warm wood tones, creating a softer atmosphere and a more considerate, caring experience.
Aligning with the spatial layout, the design strategically incorporates three slanted walls as entry points to the segmented zones. These structures evoke the compelling presence of snow-covered peaks, generating an anti-gravity visual tension, as if descending into an otherworldly outdoor ski resort.
Repetitive diamond patterns on the floor, symbolizing a sense of speed, create a tense and rhythmic atmosphere that invites exploration. Translucent acrylic materials, paired with sleek, gliding trajectory-inspired lines, signify the latent energy of snow and ice.
3)New civilization: Exploring a Snow and Ice World
DESCENTE’s winter sportswear rests serenely on cantilevered racks against a glacial backdrop, creating an immersive sense of tranquility and evoking the reassuring power of snow and ice.
In this imagined future world, humanity coexists with snow and ice, where the cold is no longer a distant spectacle. At the Allterrain collection area, the central installation anchors the spatial flow, showcasing a sleek, minimalist aesthetic rooted in technology for snow and ice environments.
The space integrates technology and sports elements, featuring pristine, translucent backdrops that invite deeper exploration while elevating the space with dynamic layering and avant-garde aesthetics.
The setting harmonizes translucent elements with cool metallic tones, accentuating a futuristic appeal through sleek details. The space offers an immersive fusion of technology and fashion, inviting consumers to experience the warmth of functional aesthetics.
The men’s collection area is characterized by cool metallic hues and sleek decor, enveloping customers in a modern, technological ambiance. Surrounding industrial-style display racks cast dynamic patterns of light and shadow, creating a striking interplay with the floor design.
The design reimagines ice and snow sports gear into a dynamic display system tailored to a futuristic urban space. A suspended matrix of displays takes form, blending bold metallic structures with concrete tones to evoke the vision of a future concrete jungle, highlighting the avant-garde concept and practical scenarios of the Dualis collection.
STILL YOUNG envisions a futuristic ice and snow world, weaving a spatial narrative of synchronized progression along elevated trajectories. By integrating cutting-edge materials with reimagined artistic forms, the project creates an immersive temporal-spatial experience that resonates emotionally and spiritually with consumers.
Team:
Design team: DESCENTE, STILL YOUNG
Photography: FREE WILL PHOTOGRAPHY
