Expectation is a hard thing to live up to, especially if both your proposed environment and brand have a strong heritage to maintain. The hardest thing is to be true to the respective natures, the easiest thing - compromise.

Super-brands increasingly have the financial potential to irrevocably assert their brand experience, irrespective of location. In a definitive show of quintessential British understatement, and without compromise, Burberry have achieved this balance on Regent Street, with a breathtaking synergy.

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The recent Trendwatching seminar in London was a great opportunity for our designers to re-engage with global inspiration following our distinctly patriotic Olympic projects. We wanted to ensure our retail and leisure clients kept ahead of their own game in this instance.

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Once again developing our airside-retail pedigree, we’ve just returned from an exciting international luxury pitch in Malaysia, tender courtesy of the charming Malaysia Airlines. The airport itself is a modern retail carousel; its mid-mall tropical walkway with arms of multi-level retail radiating outwards. Outside of the airport, Kuala Lumpur is typically diverse as any international capital.

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The Design team, despite our ultra-busy work load managed to congregate under the distinguished arches of Somerset House last Wednesday for our annual visit to London’s best contemporary graphics art fair. Once again, Pick-Me-Up didn’t disappoint.

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An article about the newly refurbished WDF store in Manchester Airport Terminal 1, was featured in this weeks Moodie Report. Click on 'Read more and comment'...

We recently had the privilege of attending the BIM conference at Kings Place, London. The day was aimed at answering the question of why BIM should play a key role in the industry and enabled delegates to share experiences of using BIM and how it has benefited their individual companies. The main conference saw large and small companies describe some of the key steps to rolling out BIM in a business and provided tips from their experiences, speakers also debated some key challenges for BIM in the coming year.

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Tommy Hilfiger's brand new flagship store on Brompton Road London had its grand opening last night (1st December 2011). The star studded ceremony featured a state of the art video projection onto the building, which produced an eye catching display for passers by...

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Retailers have paraded their green credentials long enough now to know that genuine engagement increases profits...

rpa:group took part in the world's biggest coffee morning last week for the 8th year running to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

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Two of our designers, Daniel Bolt & Ieva Jasiunaite recently entered a competition launched by The National Design Academy in Nottingham. A client had purchased a one million pound penthouse in Riverside Crescent and wanted the Interior work designed on a budget of £100,000 to return a rental figure of £5,000 pcm.

Click on 'read more' to see what Daniel and Ieva had to say about the design and how they did overall in the competition.

rpa:vision recently had the opportunity to support and sponsor the SkillVM competition at the Instore show, which was exhibiting at Olympia, London. The competition enabled talented students from various Universities across the country to showcase their visual merchandising, creative and technical skills by designing a window display.

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One of our project coordinators, Ben Richardson, recently had a look round the New Disney store located on Oxford Street, London. The store was designed by PompeiAD shop fitters Quinn Interiors and is now the largest Disney store in Europe consisting of 8200 square ft. Here is what Ben had to say about the store....

We asked work experience student Mitchell Bonnick about his experience working for rpa:architecture, and this is what he had to say... click on 'read more' for more details.

Further to attending the Adris BIM Conference in Southampton last week its worth commenting on the improvements in the latest 2012 Revit software and I’d recommend looking at the Building Design Suite Premium. 

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The last Design Studio outing was to the Pick Me Up exhibition at Somerset House. A contemporary graphic art fair, Pick Me Up brings together the most innovative graphic artists, collectives and galleries from the UK and across the world together in one place. This year that also included live drawings sessions and live music - great fun. Better late than never, here are some images from people whose work we really enjoyed... more in the 'read more' link...

Victo Ngai:

Tom Gauld:

With Heston Blumenthal extolling the virtues of nutrition as part of the medical healing process in his “Mission Impossible” series on Channel 4, We now have a chance to see the powerful role that architecture can play in the physiological healing process via an exhibition at the V&A called 'The Architecture of Hope'

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Just before the start of the 2011 F1 Grand Prix Season some rpa:architecture and rpa:vision staff members decided to take part in their own motor race and took part in an endurance karting event at F1 Karting Heathrow..... (click on 'read more' for details)

We had a great few days in Brighton at the CIH conference last week. It was our 3rd year of exhibiting at the conference and it was good to see familiar faces and make some new contacts. There were over 1000 delegates and over 200 exhibitors including, Developers, Architects, Consultants, Surveyors and many more. rpa:architecture had a stand within the exhibition showcasing some of our latest projects and it was great to interact with so many people over the course of the 3 days.

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As part of our ongoing support of The Shooting Stars Children's Hospice, some of the guys here at rpa:group have set themselves a challenge to raise money for this great cause, involving great fundraising ideas such as a pancake making service on Shrove Tuesday - over to them for the details...

Here are some of our favourite stands from around the show… extra pictures in the read more link.

DART - Clever treatment of four linked 'box' walkthroughs – one with an abstract and innovative use of gauze to create a 3D effect (Pictured above)

Focus Lighting – An interesting installation of suspended bird-like elements within the stand, casting atmospheric light and shadows when viewed from the exterior:

Holtmann – High impact and striking chalkboard effect to the exterior showcasing hand drawn (and very smudgeable!) chalk sketches of projects, contrasted by a highly finished and minimal interior presentation space:

Umdasch - Very large scale stand incorporating presentation areas with a full service restaurant and cooking demonstrations from top Chefs! Good use of simple, food-themed graphics relating to services offered by Umdasch and partner Assman Ladenbau:

The rpa:vision team have been working hard this week meeting visitors at the show and bringing individuality and impact to the Designer Village...

Euroshop is well underway - here are some images from earlier last week of the design team preparing our props!

Popup shops allow designers to be experimental, unexpected and unpredictable thereby creating often truly unique customer experiences which are not constrained by considerations of lifecycle costs and long-term maintenance...

Artist Rob Ryan, artist and papercutter extraordinaire has an exhibition on at the Air gallery in Dover Street, run by TAG fine arts.

It's free and it's on until 20th November, so pop along while you can and gaze at some of Rob's intricate artworks. As a fan, it's been really interesting to see his work change and progress – he's using a lot less colour than previous work and more intricate, smaller details combined with larger pieces overall. Above is the lovely lasercut card used to promote the exhibition and private view, plus a rather lo-fi iPhone photo taken at the exhibition.

Find more information about Rob and his work, have a look at www.misterrob.co.uk.

Following our dalliances, our first youthful flush of love and promise of commitment to 'Green', early indications are that the passion is starting to fade, the honeymoon period is over and that day-to-day life is once more dulling our green-tinted spectacles.

People are voting with their feet and fingers: the Centre for Economics and Business Research forecasts that nationwide, total sales of green products will more than double in value from £8.04m in 2009 to £17.1bn by 2015. Online sales of environmentally- friendly products are expected to hit £1.4bn in value by 2015.