In the retail space, every design choice can play a role in creating an amazing brand experience. Scott Faucheux, creative director at TPG Architecture in New York, is an expert in this space.
After graduated from Virginia Tech, he kicked off his architecture and design career working for HOK in Washington, D.C. There he worked primarily on large cultural projects as well as large museum projects. During that time, he was traveling a great deal to New York and decided to make the move in 1998.
“I was working on a lot of architecture and interior projects, but in 2005, I started working with a gentleman named Ron Pompei, who brought the Urban Outfitters and Anthropology concepts to life,” Faucheux said. “I joined his studio and eventually ended up directing that studio for a number of years. I was really focused on retail and customer experiences and the brand landscape.”
He came on board at TPG in June 2023 and his work is focused primarily on the retail space as well as some hospitality. Here, he shares how he landed in the A&D world; how flooring selection in the retail space has changed over time and how the pandemic has impacted this change; and what is trending right now flooring in retail.
The following are excerpts of our conversation, which you can listen to in its entirety below.
FLOOR Trends & Installation: How has flooring selection in the retail space changed over the last decade?
Faucheux: I think the biggest change has been how much variety there is available now. As more and more manufacturers get focused on their business, they understand the segmentation of the markets. They understand the types of products, and they are having great conversations with the specifiers and with the end users to find incredibly durable, affordable and interesting materials that offer a selection that hasn’t been seen up until the past 10 years.
I also think as technology and manufacturing progress, there’s been all kinds of new, recycled and reclaimed materials that are finding their way into a larger path to market. I think the last couple of years have given brands the chance to get their digital game and supply chain and everything in order and also perfect their 360 digital ecosystems. I think what’s been happening now is that as people have been at home and away for the last couple of years, more and more brands are getting dialed into the physical experience of stores and really investing in creating compelling experiences to bring people out of their homes and into shopping centers. It’s really exciting as a retail designer to see that level of change in investment.
FLOOR: What are you seeing in regards to design trends when it comes to flooring in those spaces?
Faucheux: There are a lot of really cool customizable products that’s happening, especially amongst a lot of the luxury brands. They are finding ways to include interesting textures, patterns, color and more customers are attuned to brand icons.
There’s a lot more recycled and reclaimed product as well. More and more people are becoming conscientious about the specifications and customers are responding to the demand that brands be transparent about their sourcing and their impact in the world. I think there’s more sustainable options available now, which makes that transparency a lot easier for brands. The hurdles of what used to be in the past, the added expense and the added complexity are now evaporating, and we're seeing more accessibility to those product lines that cause good.
FLOOR: How do you cater to multiple generations?
Faucheux: That's an interesting conundrum, I think, for a lot of brands. You have some brands that have dropped their centuries-old strategies, some big luxury houses that are embracing new consumers in totally new ways. I think there are ways to navigate the shared values between generations. By speaking to shared values between generations, you are able to create conversations with all of those groups and not just one or the other. There are priorities that are different when you’re 50 than when you’re 15 in terms of how you spend your money and time. But I think there are aspects of brands that appeal to multiple generations, and if we’re speaking to them in ways that are about those shared values, it creates more inclusion.
FLOOR: What other things are brands doing to attract customers?
Faucheux: More and more brands are looking across their traditional boundaries and looking for more out-of-the-box opportunities. There have been some interesting partnerships. For example, North Face did a partnership with Gucci, those are two brands that don’t live in the same world and they are collaborating. I think there’s more and more of those type of collaborations that are happening that allow them to reimagine where they go as brands and what their impact can be.
FLOOR: What types of flooring are you seeing right now that are most popular?
Faucheux: Durable. I think for a lot of the retailers to be able to either take short leases because of the volatility in the market and be able to have flooring that can be taken up and taken down, lightweight carpets. If it’s a six-month to a year lease as they’re testing markets, something that can be reclaimed and taken out and put into another space is a big thing that we’re seeing. But once retailers commit to spaces, we’re seeing affordable, durable, low maintenance products, being one of the drivers for what actually ends up being specified and installed.
FLOOR: As a specifier, how important is it to use sustainable solutions?
Faucheux: I think it's incredibly important. As we consider the life of the spaces that we're in, the people who are going into them, not just the sustainability aspects, but the wellness and health aspects of all products going into the spaces we design is very critical. Spaces that make people sick is not really a great thing. That's a very basic need to meet, but when we think about sustainability and think about, not just the source of the product, but also the amount of energy it takes to take that product and transform it into something useful, there's an investment there—a carbon footprint investment and a labor materials investment. Once that material outlives its usefulness, what do you do with it?
I think more and more people are saying that that's not acceptable. More brands are finding ways to move that material into new things, new products. If it can't be reclaimed or recycled, how can we reuse it in some sense, maybe for a new product? But I think there's a number of engineered products that are doing this successfully as well.
FLOOR: Does the criteria that people use to determine the flooring products that they're going to use change across the regions in the country?
Faucheux: I think it does. I definitely think there are some areas that may be a bit more passionate about recyclability and sustainability. I think about the Pacific Northwest being one of those areas where they've led a lot of the states legislatively. California as well in terms of how they're creating criteria for product that's having a bigger influence over what's available nationwide and why products are chosen nationwide. If we're looking at areas like Florida where they're underwater fairly frequently in some places, that's changing the way people make decisions about what goes on the floors as well. Wood flooring sucks up water and can get destroyed and destroy the rest of your space versus a concrete floor or a tile.
FLOOR: In terms of materiality, circularity and environmental impact, what are some of your preferred flooring types and why do you select those?
Faucheux: For me, there's three. Wood and wood-based product is always number one for me. Partly, it's because it can be regrown and be sustainably sourced. We can do FSC-certified product that we know is taken care of from an ecosystem point of view. We know that those products can be recycled. With a lot of the manufacturers that we look to specify, we want to find programs that will actually come and reclaim them for us so that we're not left trying to find somebody to figure out what to do with the material once it's at the end of its life cycle for our clients.
FLOOR: What about bamboo?
Faucheux: I think bamboo is a really interesting product also from a sustainability point of view. I think from an aesthetic point of view, it has a very specific look but I do think there are more manufacturers who are finding ways to transform it into a wider variety of visual types that have as much use and applicability. So, it's not just bamboo planking, it's stuff that's been refibered or burnt and all kinds of other interesting textures and colors.
FLOOR: What are the differences, advantages and disadvantages and the limitations of bamboo compared to wood?
Faucheux: I think with a lot of wood product, aside from the growing time period, bamboo is much faster to grow and faster to recover after harvest, and it has a much greater desirability from a sustainability point of view because of how quickly it can be renewed. There is a small amount of impact that the cutting down of a bamboo stand has compared to cutting down a stand of oak as well as the amount of labor and energy required to transfer things like oak is pretty high compared to bamboo footprint.
Once bamboo is processed, it takes a lot less energy to turn it into something useful than it does with a lot of other species. It's a very fibrous wood, so it's hard to create a lot of the pressed product and reconstituted product.
FLOOR: Comparing both of those to rubber flooring, that's certainly been the go-to forever for durability and even recyclability. How has it changed over the last few years? How has it changed to make it a more desirable product?
Faucheux: As people have been looking at the environmental impact of how that material degrades and the long-term impact that it has, I think more and more manufacturers are finding ways of reconstituting product and remaking that product and reshaping it.
There was a project I had done a while ago and it's funny because the flooring materials were bamboo and recycled rubber tile. I had worked on the retail program at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. One of the brand challenges that we issued to the brand was if we're going to be involved in the sustainability aspect, we really need to be focused on that in the retail spaces as well as the rest of the museum. So those materials were specifically chosen for the low impact to their carbon footprint, but also the recyclability and our ability to communicate those stories and be able to say, we are making responsible choices.
FLOOR: What’s on the horizon for flooring design?
Faucheux: I think there's more and more customization that's going to be on the horizon. As more brands and commercial interiors are figuring out that there's a certain amount of customization that I think it's not that much more of a reach in an investment to define custom programs versus off the shelf. I think more and more designers are really looking for the opportunity to customize and the opportunity to make statements and do unique things that aren't necessarily commercially available in the market right now. Especially as the next generation comes up, there's a lot of virtual ideas that people are asking, "Why can't we do this in the real world?" And the manufacturers are reading that and meeting that challenge and finding ways to create custom programs that are just as accessible from a price-point of view as their stock lines.
