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Everyone knows pain. It’s the most common ailment people experience, from a headache to a stubbed toe to a sore back. Treating pain can be as straightforward as popping a pill. But for people experiencing chronic painlike the lingering aftereffects of chemotherapy or the slow rehabilitation after a major car accidentmedication is rarely enough to fully erase the pain. When the patient experiencing chronic pain is a child, the stakes can feel even higher. To help children experiencing chronic pain, a new kind of clinical space has been created that goes way beyond handing out medication. The Stad Center for Pediatric Pain, Palliative and Integrative Medicine is a holistic clinic that combines Western medicine, rehabilitation, psychological care, and less conventional forms of pain management, including hypnotherapy, acupuncture, and meditation. In its newest location, designed by the architecture firm NBBJ and opening next month in San Francisco, the architecture of the clinic plays a significant role in this multifaceted approach to treating pain. [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] It was specifically designed in a way to start the healing before children even see the first doctor, says Dr. Stefan Friedrichsdorf, medical director of the Stad Center. The clinic features nature-inspired decor, alcoves, and furnishings. Two themes, underwater and redwood forest, appear throughout the clinic and are given playful, almost interactive elements to encourage engagement among younger patients. One wall in the lobby features a projected digital waterfall over a forest scene, and its flowing water responds to the movement and touch of children who come near it. Natural-looking materials, abundant daylight, and spacious common areas are intended to exude calm. We’re one of the very few places that really show that our goal is to help children and adolescents and young adults to get back to normal life and get rid of the pain, Friedrichsdorf says. [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] Rethinking the waiting room Part of the University of California San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospitals system, the Stad Center is a five-year-old clinic that builds off Friedrichsdorf’s previous working building a similar pain center in Minneapolis. When the opportunity arose to build a brand new space at UCSF, Friedrichsdorf flew the NBBJ design team out to Minneapolis to see how this holistic approach to treating pain works. In addition to its inclusion of non-Western medical and healing modalities, Friedrichsdorf’s multidisciplinary approach avoids some of the spatial separations that can slow the delivery of care. [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] The biggest difference between this new clinic and most health care spaces is that it does not have a formal waiting room. To reduce the anxiety that young patients can experience in hospital settings, the clinic was designed to make a smooth transition from the outside to a consultation area, exam room, or therapy space. The lobby is one point of a circular pathway that leads to sitting areas, treatment rooms, and rehabilitation spaces. There are almost no right angles, and the designers used natural curves to inform its layout. [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] Another major focus of the design was creating a space where the center’s team of multidisciplinary practitioners can meet with new patients, all together, to understand the pain conditions and plan out a course of treatment. That intake can take a long time, because we really want to spend the time to understand what brought the child to the clinic and then really think about what we would recommend for them, says Dr. Karen Sun, a hospitalist at the Stad Center. Friedrichsdorf explains that chronic pain can often be hard to detect, which leads many doctors to either ignore it or over-medicate it. Kids have often heard well, we don’t see anything on the imagery, therefore the pain is not real, therefore you’re crazy or you’re making this up, he says. I always tell my kids your pain is real, you’re not craz, you’re not making this up. I see this all the time. Now, what do we need to do to make sure that this pain goes away? [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] A new approach to chronic pain The intake meeting with the clinic’s various practitioners helps the team understand the pain and identify the best interventions, be they medical, rehabilitative, or less conventional forms of healing. It feels very cohesive. It feels very much like things flow. And they leave with a really strong sense of what’s going to happen, Sun says. There’s none of this, Oh, we’re going to refer you to physical therapy and then you have to wait for three months. [Photo: NBBJ/courtesy UCSF] That physical therapist is typically in the room for that intake meeting, and the physical therapy gym is right down the hall. Same with the acupuncture and acupressure studios, meditation spaces, and more conventional medical exam and treatment rooms. One feature patients have responded to well in early testing is the multisensory room, which features dimmable lights, speakers built into chairs, a hanging swing, a climbing wall, and other interactive elements meant to help calm children with particular sensitivities. This is something quite fabulous and originally meant for children who have impairment of the brain or other senses, Friedrichsdorf says. However, we found that otherwise healthy kids and teenagers really, really enjoy this room. Pulling all these treatment types into one center means that patients can easily access whatever will help address their specific type of pain. We have found if we combine the best Western medicine and medications, interventions, surgery, rehabilitation, and psychology with those integrative modalities, that kids heal much faster and get back to life earlier, Friedrichsdorf says.
Category:
E-Commerce
In 1865, a new department store opened in Paris called Printemps (which is French for spring). The architecture is a stunning Art Deco masterpiece, replete with mosaics, dramatic turrets, and enormous windows with dramatic displays of recent products. Today, it sits among other iconic Parisian landmarks, like the Galleries Lafayette store and the Opera. But back then, there was nothing nearby except a railway line that only carried cargo. When we opened our store on Boulevard Haussmann, it was a completely new area, says Jean-Marc Bellaiche, CEO of Printemps Groupe, the store’s parent company. It was a bet that this neighborhood would become hot and vibrant. It was a very successful bet. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] This week, Printemps is making a bet on another neighborhood in another continent: New York’s Financial District. Over the past few years, the area has gone through a massive revitalization, as apartments, restaurants, and shops have moved in. Printemps is moving into the ground floor of a 50-story residential building at One Wall Street. Fifteen years ago, it would have been risky to move here, but it’s transforming in a big way, he says. Bellaiche says Printemps spent a lot of time thinking about the new dynamics in the Financial District. He points out that the area was once dominated by bankers, but there are many other businesses in the area now, including media, fashion, and technology. The Spotify headquarters are nearby, he says. He also finds it appealing that there are many new apartment complexes in the area, and families are moving in. It makes the area feel much more like a real neighborhood, one that we are now a part of, he says. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] Printemps’s flagship store in Paris is a gargantuan 450,000 square foot operation that is spread out across three buildings, and features more than 1,500 brands. Bellaiche, who joined the company in 2020, has been instrumental in helping to think about Printemps’s future. Part of this has involved expanding beyond France to other markets. Printemps opened a Doha, Qatar, in 2022, and this New York store continues this investment in foreign markets. The New York store is about a tenth the size, and the company wanted to design a store that was somewhat cozier. It has a far smaller, more curated assortment of brands and products that are generally high-end, but that span a range of price points. While you can buy Louboutins in the shoe section, Nike Women is also doing a pop-up, offering affordably priced sneakers. We thought, what if Printemps had a pied-a-terre in New York, says Laura Lendrum, CEO of Printemps America. So we kind of took that idea literally, and designed the store around the concept of an apartment. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] The company brought on Laura Gonzalez, a French interior designer, to help design the space. She worked with the Printemps team to create various rooms, much like you would have in a home, where you would want to spend time. The Red Room, which is a historic space in the One Wall Street building, has been transformed into a walk-in closet for shoes. Beauty products are displayed in a cozy bathroom inspired space with green tiled walls. There’s a cafe and a restaurant inspired by a breakfast nook and a dining room. There are plenty of plush sofas for you to sit on. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] Designed for discovery Lendruma retail veteran who previously worked for Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Saint Laurentsays the idea of creating a homey feel was very deliberate. For years, brick and mortar was in decline, even in the realm of high-end department stores. (Barney’s shuttered in 2020, after 97 years in business.) In the post-pandemic world, consumers’ appetites for retail has returned, but Lendrum says they don’t want to feel like the shopping experience is purely transactional. One way they signal this is by letting the customer choose how they want to spend their time in the store, rather than directing them towards particular sections to make purchases. In the IKEA model, the store directs you to go from point A to point B to maximize how much you will buy, says Lendrum. But here, our designer has made sure there is not a single path through the store. It isall about the poetry of shapes and curves; there are no straight lines. Everything is designed to encourage discovery and wandering. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] Lendrum says that the team focused on creating lots of flexible areas which can be transformed from season to season, to keep things interesting for guests. This proved to be a challenge. In retail, architects don’t like creating flexibility spaces because the lighting and fixtures need to be adapted to the merchandise, Lendrum says. But Laura [Gonzalez] was willing to make it work. This means we can convert areas into brand pop-ups, cooking classes, book readingswhatever is interesting for the community. [Photo: Gieves Anderson/Printemps New York] Bellaiche says that the restaurants were another way of making the space less transactional, and more focused on hospitality. Printemps’s Paris flagship has more than 15 dining options, including La Perruche, a rooftop restaurant that has 1,000 seats, 400 of which offer a view of the Eiffel Tower and the Opera. Bellaiche wanted the New York store to be equally known for its dining. Printemps managed to bring on Gregory Gourdet, a James Beard award winning chef who opened the Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, to develop a range of dining options, which will include fine dining and a caf�. As the Financial District keeps booming, and more families move into nearby apartments, Bellaiche hopes people will think of Printemps less as a place to shop for clothes or makeup and more as a regular destination as they go about life. We hope people will come in for their daily coffee and croissant, he says. We love seeing people come into the store every day. It allows us to develop an intimacy with them.
Category:
E-Commerce
Yellow Tail, the budget-friendly Australian wine brand known to college students everywhere, has barely touched its branding since its debut in 2001. Now, though, the company is tweaking its lookincluding its iconic kangaroo logoin an attempt stand out on shelves as younger generations turn away from the wine aisle and toward trendy canned cocktails. The new branding, which includes a more vibrant Roo mascot and crisper product labels, will hit shelves in the U.S. this coming June. The understated update seems like a bid to remind consumers of what once made Yellow Tail’s accessible, easy-to-parse branding so innovativebut it’s less likely to make a splash in a now-over-saturated market. [Photo: Courtesy of yellow tail] Wine in decline The wine industry is currently in a state of decline, both in the U.S. and globally. According to the IWSR, a global alcohol industry analytics firm, 2023 was the first year in nearly three decades that overall spirits sales declined rather than increase. Globally, the volume of wine sold that year was down 4%, a trend the IWSR predicts will continue until at least 2028. And in the U.S. in 2024, wine sales to retailers declined by 8%, based on data from Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA). The decreasing interest in wine in the U.S. is attributable to a number of factors, including a rising cultural interest in moderating alcohol consumption, a growing number of alcohol-free options on the market, and a younger consumer base thats steering away from wine. Ever since the pandemic helped popularize to-go cocktails, ready-to-drink canned cocktails have become the trendy drink of choice for Gen Zers and Millennials over a $5 bottle of vino. Yellow Tails parent brand, Casella Wines, is Australia’s top wine brand by global sales, but it has faced headwinds in the last couple of years. From 2021 to 2022, the brands total sales dropped from $500.53 million to $461.16 million, while net profit slumped 56% to $25.38 million. This past year, the brand recovered somewhat with a revenue of $476.42 million and a net profit of $26.53 million. Yellow Tails offerings, which retail for around $10 or less, fit snugly within one of the sectors that has seen the most decline: cheap wines. Per a 2024 IWSR report, both standard and below-average priced wines are considered to be in a state of long-term decline. Meanwhile, more premium-priced wines (between $15 and $49.99) are expected to gain in sales volume by 2027. Still, Yellow Tails team sees its accessibility as a marketing asset. Yellow Tail has always been about making wine approachable, easy to choose, and easy to enjoy, which gives it broad appeal across different types of consumers, says Libby Nutt, Yellow Tails general manager of marketing and export sales. While overall alcohol consumption is declining globally (including wine), we see Yellow Tail as well-positioned to meet the needs of todays drinkers. A kangaroo for the modern drinker When Yellow Tail debuted in 2001, its playful, non-intimidating branding stood out in a sector full of more serious-looking wine. In fact, its frequently referenced in marketing courses as an example of the Blue Ocean strategy, a term for finding a unique gap in an existing market. The brands approach to wine for the everyman also included simple, easy-to-decipher labels highlighting only the need-to-know information, like the grape variety and brand name itself. But as the market has become more saturated (see brands like Cupcake Vineyards, for example), its become more difficult to make an impact on shelves. Yellow Tails pack design is iconic, remaining largely unchanged since its launch, Nutt says. However, after more than 20 years, it was time for a strategic update, one that enhanced the design without losing its distinctiveness. The wine market is increasingly competitive, making shelf standout and strong branding more important than ever. This refresh builds on our existing brand assets, making them even more recognizable. [Photo: Courtesy of yellow tail] The changes are subtle, but not unnoticeable. The Yellow Tail brand name has been moved above the logo, making it easier for consumers to immediately recognize each bottles variety. The color contrast on the labels has also been pumped up to draw the eye. In keeping with Yellow Tails tradition of accessibility, short flavor descriptions have been added to each blend. And, perhaps most notably, the Roo mascot has been given a bit of a facelift. His back has been rounded, his outlines more defined, and his shapes simplifiedgiving him a look more akin to an animated cartoon character than his former roughly sketched self. In this refresh, weve made [Roo] bolder and more dynamic, better reflecting the brands free-spirited, easy-going nature, Nutt says. Given that the new branding has yet to launch in the U.S., its unclear how consumers will respond to the look. And, based on the relative restraint of the rebrand, it seems more like Yellow Tail is using this move to get back on consumers radars rather than to actually reposition itself to a new audience. Still, for the wine industry at large, its going to take a lot more than a slightly new look to convince customers to ditch their spiked seltzer or non-alcoholic beer in favor of a classic bottle of red.
Category:
E-Commerce
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