ABSTRACT
In the first edition of Designers’ Journal, published in November 1983, James Woudhuysen, a design analyst and critic, wrote: ‘AID, Wolff Olins and Michael Peters, three of London’s largest design houses, all report that more of their general business is coming from the retail sector.’ He also reported that, ‘Editors of financial newspapers celebrate shop design specialist Fitch & Co.’, a recognition that interior design had become a major economic driver. A Fitch & Co. report had showed that 80% of Britons lived within a 20-minute drive of ‘competing shopping centres’; Woudhuysen concluded that this gave ‘the British a wholly unnecessary breadth of choice’. In the Designers’ Journal of April 1985, in an article entitled ‘Chain Reactions’, Patrick Hannay considered ‘significant recent developments on the High Street’ – the first shoots of the expansion that was to drive the proliferation of commercial interior design practices. He concentrated on two fledgling chains: Next and Principles.
