Tuesday, Apr 25, 2017

DUBAI: The new Apple store integrates elements that will be new for customers in Dubai.

The store is two levels and offers beautiful views of the Dubai Fountain and Burj Khalifa, with doors that can stand permanently open to allow air to flow directly into the building. Apple has previously designed stores with open facades, but the one in Dubai, where heat is a major factor in the summer, was a challenge for Apple’s designers.

“Very challenging, but I think the design team saw it as an incredible opportunity,” said Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail. “We wanted there to be certain similarities to Union Square [where the store opens up over a central square in San Francisco]. We wanted the entire glass façade that is so ‘Apple’ and makes us so transparent because the whole goal is to be one with the community and always look outward and not just inward.”

But Ahrendts said it also important to have touches that are locally relevant.

“The trees are local. Of course, the team is local. But then what they [asked] was. ‘How do we do something that shades?’”

She said that was how Apple came up with the ideas for the “solar wings” that will shade the front of the store. The ‘wings’ are mobile, 37-feet tall, made of carbon fibre and meant to invoke the image of falcons. They can be adjusted to for environmental conditions.

Ahrendts said the wings are also the largest kinetic (moving) art installation in the world.

When asked why Apple didn’t open at the Dubai Mall first as many expected, instead of opening stores first in Abu Dhabi’s Yas Mall and the Mall of the Emirates, Ahrendt said the company took its time to make sure their store at the Dubai Mall was “the best.”

“This is the number one mall in the region, if not the world, with 80 million people visiting ... Sometimes waiting for something great just takes time.”

Scott Shuey, Business Editor Gulf News 2017. All rights reserved.