Surreal spaces.

Few brands have embraced surreal retail quite like Gentle Monster.

HAUS NOWHERE in Seoul, created by IICOMBINED, the parent company of Gentle Monster, moves far beyond the idea of a conventional store. Instead, it combines art, design and commerce within an environment built around exploration and discovery.

At the heart of the space sits Sunshine, a giant animatronic dachshund that appears to sleep within a dreamlike landscape, complete with subtle breathing movements and remarkably lifelike detailing. Around it, kinetic installations, theatrical displays and interactive moments create a retail environment that feels intentionally unfamiliar.

It is store design as world-building. Product becomes only one layer of the visit, while scale, movement and spectacle encourage people to explore for longer. The result is a space that feels more like crossing into another reality.

Surrealism does not always have to feel dark or unsettling. Sometimes it can be bright, playful and completely joyful.

LEGO’s Bloom Exhibition in Shanghai, more than 380,000 LEGO flowers were used to create a vast floral landscape spilling from the TANK Art Centre towards the waterfront. Rather than presenting LEGO Botanicals within conventional retail displays, the installation turned the product itself into an immersive environment.

Visitors could move through the oversized landscape, build their own LEGO flowers and contribute them to a shared digital environment, bringing together physical interaction, play and participation.

It is an interesting example of how pop-ups, exhibitions and retail activations can build much larger brand worlds around a product.

Instead of showing something for sale, LEGO created something people could step inside and be apart of.

The best window displays make people stop. These ones make you look twice.

For Dior, artist Alex Chinneck reimagined the fashion house’s storefronts through a series of architectural illusions. Familiar retail elements appear to bend, twist and unravel, creating scenes that seem to sit somewhere between the real and the impossible. What makes the work particularly effective is that the experience begins before anyone enters the store.

The window display itself becomes the intervention, challenging the viewer’s perception of the built environment and transforming a familiar retail format into something unexpected. The displays encourage passers-by to pause, question what they are seeing and engage with the storefront beyond its commercial function.

Immersive retail does not always require enormous footprints, digital technology or elaborate visitor journeys. One impossible visual moment is enough.

And finally, perhaps the most fitting example of them all….

Tim Burton’s Labyrinth takes the traditional exhibition format and turns it into a surreal journey through the filmmaker’s imagination. Rather than presenting artwork and film memorabilia in a linear gallery environment, the experience is built as a maze of interconnected spaces that visitors actively navigate themselves.

Scenes inspired by films including Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas combine original artwork with theatrical sets, lighting, sound and interactive environments. The boundary between exhibition, entertainment and physical exploration becomes deliberately blurred.

Crucially, there is no single prescribed journey. Visitors choose their own route, with each decision revealing different characters, spaces and experiences. That sense of agency turns the visit into something personal, unpredictable and highly memorable.

For retail designers, there is plenty to take from this. Mystery creates curiosity. Curiosity encourages exploration. And when people feel like they are discovering a space rather than simply moving through it, the environment becomes part of the story.