Quotes of the Day

Birmingham is the latest city to embrace the "build-it-and-they-will-come" philosophy. The city's newly refurbished shopping center, Bullring, is anchored by a futuristic 190,000-sq-m Selfridges store adorned with 150,000 aluminum disks — and no sign of the store's name. Sure, it's reminiscent of Frank Gehry's Bilbao museum, but don't mention that to Selfridges' CEO Peter Williams. "It's different for a shop to be a tourist destination," he said at a debut party this month. "We want people to come see the building, but we want them to buy something."

Selfridges Birmingham is the first department store designed by Future Systems, a London-based husband-and-wife architecture team. Avant-garde designs like theirs don't usually appeal to conservative retailers, who are primarily concerned with sales per square meter. But Selfridges was different. "They accepted a loss of floor space for the drama of an atrium," said Future Systems partner Amanda Levete. "The role of the department store has become elevated because of our building." They now hope to elevate another bit of day-to-day life — commuting. In collaboration with the artist Anish Kapoor, Future Systems has designed two subway entrances in Naples, Italy. Construction begins next year. "They are in a part of the city that is quite poor aesthetically. The city wants to redress that," Levete says. Their Naples designs also have ambitions beyond mere utility. "We wanted to make the entrances a work of art rather than a piece of architecture," says Levete. "They're about the drama of descent." So that is what's next: build it, and they'll go down.

• LAUREN GOLDSTEIN
• Designs for living, shopping, and travel