The concept for the design for Readings was to encourage browsing and reading, for customers to take in a quiet moment in a busy shopping expedition.

The Emporium heritage bones gave us a perfect backdrop with large Art Deco windows flooding the space with natural light. The brief was to house almost 500 linear metres of books – so we needed to play with density in the space. A taller and more intimate library is located on one side then opens right up to a browsing area with interspersed seating towards the natural light. We played with transparency to make the back of the bookshelves as beautiful as the front – as customers buy and move books they create windows into the main book aisles visible through the shopfront and from the shop floor.

The main bookshelf aisle is one large piece of furniture that hosts not only the books but the lighting and signage. Designed as a series of independent furniture elements – the shelving can evolve and adapt to create future stores in different spaces. Everything is a kit of parts, even the signage can be rearranged at a moments notice as a series of frames and loose elements.

A mural by Kat Macleod draws you into the space, playing with scale it encourages exploration and discovery in the children’s section.