Silver Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2026
Top Toy Global Flagship Store
by Li Xiang
- A' Design Award 2026 Silver Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- CLIENT: Top Toy
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 25,090
- Verification code 0ABECF5044 · Verify this award
About Top Toy Global Flagship Store
Top Toy is the interior design of a global flagship store located on Nanjing East Road in Shanghai. The store uses a gamified spatial language inspired by toy packaging and classic gaming consoles. The facade recalls a blister package, and the staircases are arranged like game levels. Colorful character zones, coffee spots and building blocks form scenes that guide exploration. Modular construction and bold colors support the playful theme. The design aims to make physical retail interactive and emotionally engaging for visitors of all ages.
Li Xiang's design for this global flagship retail environment represents a significant achievement within contemporary experiential commercial architecture, where the traditional boundaries between shopping space and immersive entertainment dissolve into a unified sensory experience. The designer appears to engage with maximalist principles drawn from digital culture, gaming aesthetics, and the visual language of contemporary collectible culture, synthesizing these influences into a coherent spatial narrative that celebrates abundance, discovery, and chromatic exuberance. The technical accomplishment manifests most evidently in the masterful handling of bilateral symmetry, where the composition achieves formal balance through mirrored architectural elements while introducing calculated variations in merchandise arrangement that prevent visual monotony. The central staircase functions as both circulatory infrastructure and compositional anchor, its warm coral hue providing a complementary counterpoint to the surrounding green and blue elements while establishing a clear wayfinding hierarchy. The ceiling treatment demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how overhead planes shape spatial perception—the bold yellow chevron pattern with black accent lines creates a sense of directed movement and contained energy appropriate to the retail function. Chromatic choices throughout suggest deliberate engagement with color psychology and brand identity expression, with the saturated primary palette evoking associations with playfulness, creativity, and childhood imagination while maintaining the visual sophistication expected of flagship commercial environments. The integration of illuminated display elements, reflective surfaces, and varied merchandise creates textural density that rewards sustained visual exploration, encouraging the ambulatory engagement essential to successful retail design. One might observe how the work participates in broader conversations about the transformation of commerce into experience, suggesting that contemporary retail environments must offer sensory richness and spatial narrative to compete with digital alternatives. The viewer is invited to consider how such environments shape our relationship with objects, collection, and the pleasures of material discovery.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Top Toy global flagship store in Shanghai redefines retail with gamified spatial design, turning shopping into immersive play. Inspired by toy packaging and retro consoles, it blends modular construction, bold colors, and IP interaction to spark cross-generational resonance. The design enhances visual impact, streamlines exploration, and fosters emotional engagement — transforming a store into a spatial game world.
- Tags
- interior, retail
- Project Duration
- The project is located on Nanjing East Road, one of Shanghai’s most iconic commercial streets, and officially opened to the public in January 2025 as the brand’s first global flagship.
- Operation Flow
- The space invites people to explore like players in a game. From entering the “blister package” façade to navigating staircases like game levels, each area is a scene with missions and rewards. Colorful IP zones, coffee spots, and building blocks create moments of discovery. It feels playful and intuitive—visitors don’t just shop, they play, connect, and remember.
- Research
- On Nanjing East Road, which represents a typical urban block, Top Toy’s first global flagship store in Shanghai infuses the commercial atmosphere with a sense of ease and humor through the spontaneity of play. This breaks away from the stern and rigid nature of traditional commercial architecture and creates a relaxing and delightful interactive space for consumers using a gamified spatial language. As the first flagship project in the brand's global strategy, the store not only serves as a pioneering initiative but also undertakes the mission of driving commercial innovation through design and reshaping the consumer experience.
Grounded in keen commercial insights, the designer integrates the concept of "gamification" throughout the spatial design, creating an immersive space that is both a benchmark for the brand and forward-looking in its commercial approach. This provides a new solution for the transformation and emotional upgrade of physical retail. - Inspiration
- Inspired by the aesthetics of classic gaming consoles and the joy of play, the design draws on collective memories across generations. It reimagines the gaming world into a tangible experience, blending nostalgia, youth culture, and IP narratives. The aim was to emotionally reconnect users to the physical retail space, and create an interactive, story-rich, gamified journey for all ages.
- Image Credits
- SFAP