ABSTRACT | Hong Kong Retail Design, with its extremely competitive property market and a popular culture built around image and shopping, presents unique challenges for architects and interior designers. The city’s retail market is saturated with exclusive high-end brands pushing for an optimal spot in one of countless generic shopping malls, which are all individually vying to be the latest, the newest, the hippest, the fanciest. With visual appearance the primary definer of value and identity, landlords attempt to redefine their properties by demanding extreme make-overs every few years. Generic building frames thus undergo facelift after facelift in a massive waste-producing cycle which reduces interior design’s required life-expectancy to often little more than the grand opening party. Construction budgets frequently equal but a couple of months’ rent, making project installation timelines gruesomely short. In spite having the Pearl River Delta, also known as “the factory of the world”, on our doorstep and thus having any material easily accessible, time restrictions have rendered a culture of craftsmanship virtually impossible. Refined construction and meticulous, long-lasting detailing seem more the exception than the rule. And yet, with many brave and open-minded clients continuously yearning for novelty, for architects who manage to twist these market challenges into opportunities a virtually insatiable playground for experimentation awaits! In Hong Kong, the traditional role of Interior Architecture is potentially taking a fascinating twist.