Inspired by their project for BT cellnet at Ealing Studios, Selfridges chief executive Vittorio Radice commissioned Eldridge London to design the ‘Spirit’ floor in the radical new Selfridges store in Birmingham. Leisure is the overall theme for the floor and is home to a diverse mix of product types and shopping cultures intended to appeal to a broad cross section of people in an accessible and non-elitist way. A main circulation route loops round the entire floor whilst a parallelogram grid provides a matrix across the floor to organise individual shopping plots at floor level, lighting and other services. A series of varying height enclosing walls then define and characterise the main shopping departments. The location for the fashion departments with individual clothing collections are laid out as fields in a landscape hosting the seasonally shifting crops of fashion. The fixturing has a ‘ready mades’ theme ranging from flexible conveyor belts to large elliptical silver fabric photographic reflectors used with the light fittings. The main route through Fashion leads to an enclosing wall that defines the strongly linear space of the Book department which is lined internally with birch plywood bookshelving echoing the parchment tone of raw paper. On the outside the enclosure has a book jacket of vivid orange, which signals its presence across the Fashion landscape. The main circulation route leads through Music, Film and Games to a continuous full height wall that defines the Technology area. The enclosure is analogous to the packaging boxes that the mainly electrical products it contains are delivered in with a hard corrugated cardboard exterior and spongy profiled foam panel interior. The distinctive character of the space is reinforced by the single strong green colour used on the crumb rubber floor surface and the rigid foam paneled display units against which the products are viewed. Selfridges, Birmingham was opened to the public in September 2003.