An interior designer is a creative and innovative professional dedicated to creating spaces where people look and feel their best.
The interior designer is responsible for turning the abstract into the concrete; it is their job to transform a generic, anonymous space into something personal and livable.
Architect Miguel Barahona
In this regard, designing a commercial space adds a new level of complexity to the task, as it involves working toward three objectives simultaneously to transform a space.
According to Professor Graziella Blengio, these are:
- To help facilitate and promote sales, since that is why a brand brings in a designer.
- Improve the quality of life and ergonomics of the spaces and facilities for the employees and salespeople who spend most of their time there.
- Provide the necessary information about the product or service being offered to help potential customers find them.
The specialization in commercial space design is offered in Workshop 4, a course in the fourth semester of the Bachelor’s Degree in Interior Design at ORT’s School of Architecture, and is taught by Graziella Blengio and Antonella Abaldo.
At the beginning of the semester, we hold a lecture in which we explore how design can help influence a customer’s decision-making process in a retail setting, how to create an added value within a store so that customers can enjoy an experience—in addition to purchasing the product or (for example) eating a meal.
Antonella Abaldo.
According to Blengio, " brandscaping —or the brand landscape—should convey messages that create an emotional connection with the customer," whether in the store window to entice them inside or within the store to engage them in a different way.
"A retail space is a place of emotions and sensory stimuli—auditory, visual, and tactile—that shape our experience."
Similarly, Abaldo emphasizes that keeping customers in the store longer helps “createa positive memory” and encourages them to recommend the experience to others in the future, which helps the business stand out from the competition.
Shopping has evolved from a mechanical, rational process of acquiring products into something far more complex. There are personal stories woven into the journey through the space, and experiences both inside and outside of it that matter even more than the products themselves.
Blengio.
Since 2014 (except during the COVID-19 pandemic), Graziella Blengio has participated as a visiting professor, representing Universidad ORT Uruguay, in an annual design seminar organized by the Association for Cultural Exchange (AICU) at the University of Salamanca, which took place in February 2023.
The instructor's focus is specifically on interior design as applied to commercial spaces.
According to him, the current balance between online and in-store shopping "appears to be the norm for all brands in the wake of the pandemic."
He emphasizes that the major challenge for the present and the future is " revitalizing human connection through retail in physical stores, and through a good UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) in online stores."