Studio X’s founder Rufus Turnbull on building meaningful retail experiences

Across Hong Kong and Singapore, the rhythms of city life couldn’t be more different. For interior designer Rufus Turnbull, those contrasts are where design thinking begins. As founder and design director of Studio X, he’s spent the past decade exploring how space can express brand values while responding to the realities of density, culture and behaviour.

​In a conversation with Inside Retail, Turnbull reflects on what the two cities have taught him about retail design, why strategy comes before style, and how physical spaces are being redefined as content platforms, communities and experiences in their own right.

​Inside Retail: How has your experience working across Hong Kong and Singapore shaped your understanding of how consumers engage with physical retail spaces?

​Rufus Turnbull: In Hong Kong, density drives ingenuity. Retail GFA is heavily constrained, so every square metre is optimised; spaces stack vertically, circulation doubles as storytelling, and design precision becomes survival. In Singapore, GFA allowances and public-realm incentives create more freedom. You can prioritise flow, daylight, and comfort without compromising yield. It’s a completely different design logic: Hong Kong rewards efficiency, Singapore rewards experience.

​IR: When you begin working with a new retail client, what’s your process for understanding and translating a brand’s DNA into spatial design?

​RT: Ultimately, we’re in the business of business enhancement – design is simply the tool. When we start with a new retail client, we begin with strategy, not sketches. We define what the space needs to achieve – sales per square metre, dwell time, or brand perception – before any aesthetic direction is set. We also study how people actually use the environment: shoppers browsing, diners interacting, or staff and guests moving through it. Those behavioural insights inform the planning logic, flow and sensory tone. From there, we translate the brand’s DNA into material, light, and rhythm, creating spaces that perform commercially and feel unmistakably on-brand.

​IR: Can you share an example of a project where the design successfully captured the essence of a brand?

​RT: With Lululemon, it was about localising a global brand – introducing local textures, a human rhythm and community touchpoints that connect the store to its neighbourhood. For Lee Yuen in Hong Kong, a buyers’ showroom, we designed a gallery-like space – refined, intuitive and exploratory. And for the Singapore Cricket Club, we modernised a legacy environment while protecting its character, retaining heritage details but rethinking flow, comfort and hospitality. Each project shows that capturing the brand’s essence isn’t about replication but distilling what makes it authentic and expressing that in space.

​IR: Could you highlight a few recent Studio X projects that best illustrate your approach to experiential retail?

​RT: Recent projects have allowed us to explore experience from very different angles, from dining to large-scale retail and workplace. Hung’s is a new dining concept in Hong Kong Airport that blends mom-and-pop hospitality in a travel retail environment. At Yau Shing Commercial Centre, a major retail asset enhancement in Hong Kong, we transformed a failing building from a decaying traditional podium into a contemporary commercial multi-storey arcade – reconnecting it with the rhythm of the city and driving significant ROI through lease uptake. And for one of the world’s largest shipping companies, we’re rethinking how a crewing centre can function as both a workplace and a hospitality environment – turning an operational facility into a space that celebrates people, movement and culture – many of the cues we have developed in our work for retail brands. Together, these projects capture our belief that design should perform emotionally as well as commercially.

​IR: What are some of the biggest shifts you’re observing in how brands view their physical spaces post-pandemic?

​RT: Physical stores have evolved from sales points to content platforms. Brands now design spaces for social resonance and community activation as much as for conversion. There’s also a renewed demand for craftsmanship and tactility – materials and detailing that justify leaving the screen behind.

​Since the pandemic, brands have become far more intentional about what their physical spaces need to achieve – and why they exist at all. Stores are no longer just transactional footprints but content platforms, community touchpoints and extensions of a brand’s story. At the larger end of building scale – malls, etc, it’s all about asset enhancement – malls and landlords are rethinking their environments to prioritise community, experience and permeability. We’re seeing blurred shopfront boundaries, shared social zones and a stronger emphasis on the mall’s own brand identity as a unifying layer for tenants.

​IR: Looking back, is there a project or collaboration that you feel most proud of?

​RT: One of our greatest strengths is our ability to dramatically transform the businesses we work with – we measure success not by design awards or social-media clicks, but by the before and after and the business performance. Lee Yuen is a good example – a once-ramshackled buyers’ showroom reimagined into a refined brand environment with interactive elements that now shape how clients experience their collections. The Studio City project for Melco Resorts is another – we repositioned the mall from a legacy luxury arcade to a free-flowing F&B destination, improving circulation, visibility and commercial performance. For us, success is tangible – when design delivers measurable uplift in experience, engagement and return.

​IR: What excites you most about the future of retail design in Asia?​

RT: What excites me most is the sheer pace of change in Asia – the ambition of our clients, which we absolutely live for, and the ever-shifting expectations of an evolving customer base. The region keeps moving faster than anywhere else, with new formats, new collaborations and new ways of blending retail, dining and experience. What makes it thrilling is that there are still pockets of untapped potential that we can help our clients unlock and turn into opportunities. It’s a market where creativity, commercial intelligence and speed all matter equally – and that combination keeps us inspired every day.

Further reading: How design studio Shed is reimagining Jollibee for the world stage.

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