As an Apple fan, I know how smart their products are and as a New Yorker I know our city shines even brighter thanks to Apple’s dazzling Fifth Avenue, glass cube flagship store. But today I received a surprise when, for the first time, I looked at photographs of Apple’s other stores in the US and around the world. I had expected to find their ultra modern designs– glossy cubes and sleek rectangles — multiplied across the globe. But no.
In numerous cities Apple has designed and adapted storefronts that are downright traditional — even conservative in appearance — reflecting the style and spirit of the older structures and neighborhoods housing them. Apple’s New York Soho store started life as a branch post office. In its conversion Apple left the original exterior untouched, adding only two small signs with the Apple logo. I’ve never associated Apple with the world “old” but another of their stores is located in an art deco Miami building whose first tenant signed a lease way back in the thirties. Apple also retained the distinctive thirties exterior, though the interior, like all Apple stores, showcases their familiar layout, spacious atmosphere, parsons tables and genius bar.
What ties all Apple’s older buildings together is visual excellence. They are all unique pieces of architecture, like the incomparable Kansas City storefront with its dynamite sunrise tile mosaic centered above Apple’s doors. In one of its most beautiful stores — and its largest — at Covent Garden, London, Apple preserved the original brickwork and elegant stone arches inside and out.
I hadn’t expected Apple to be so adaptable, so flexible, unlike most retail giants that impose their cookie-cutter look on every store they produce, with often deadening results. Like other companies, however, Apple’s storefronts do have definite constants, whether on streets or in malls. They are always super clean designs, devoid of unsightly signs or discordant elements. Nobody knows better than Apple that “Less is More.” Their facade (and interior) workmanship is always perfect — a delight to savor when we’re surrounded by so much under par workmanship.
However they blend the old and the new, Apple’s classy stores beckon us to step inside, their glowing white apple logos inviting us to behold the high tech treasures displayed within.
Do you have a favorite Apple store?
Another Apple Tale:
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