The Fourth Space
Human Connection As The New Premium
By Marcos Terenzio, Allied RDI
In a world where technology can deliver almost anything instantly, human connection may become retail's most valuable experience. As AI, spatial computing, responsive environments, and immersive media reshape the retail experience, the opportunity is not simply to create more sophisticated digital interactions. It is to use those capabilities to create places that make us feel more present, more connected, and more human. This is the opportunity behind The Fourth Space, a new retail design model that moves beyond the traditional roles of home, work, and social gathering. It brings together wellness, health, community, discovery, and immersive experience in a physical environment designed around participation rather than transaction.
Importantly, the Fourth Space is not an argument against technology. It is an argument for better experiences. McKinsey's 2026 retail research makes the shift particularly clear: as AI increasingly handles discovery and routine purchasing, physical stores will become less about convenience and more about differentiated missions, including exploration, service, and social connection. McKinsey describes the emerging opportunity as creating destinations that combine retail, refreshment, and experiences to give people a reason to visit. BCG's 2026 retail predictions similarly point toward technology changing the role of frontline retail while emphasizing the importance of understanding which human touchpoints create the most value. The question, then, isn't how much technology should we put into a store? It is: how can technology help people connect more deeply with the space, with themselves and with each other?
The Technology We Don't See
This is where the Fourth Space becomes particularly interesting for designers. The most successful technology in these environments may be the technology visitors barely notice. Rather than competing with architecture, materials, nature or human interaction, digital systems can disappear into the environment and make the physical space feel more intuitive and responsive. Think of this as bio-mimicry applied to digital experience: environments that behave more like living systems than machines. Light can respond gradually rather than abruptly. Sound can shift with the energy of a room. Digital surfaces can breathe, ripple or change in response to movement. A wall doesn't have to announce that it is interactive. It can simply respond when someone approaches.
This is where ideas around bio-digitalism become useful. The digital layer becomes part of the architecture's sensory ecosystem rather than an object placed on top of it. Technology observes, interprets, and responds, while the visitor simply experiences the result. And that response doesn't always need to be spectacular. In a wellness environment, the most sophisticated interaction might be a subtle change in light that encourages you to slow down. A soundscape might become softer as a room becomes quieter. A digital canvas might respond to the collective movement of a group rather than demanding an individual's attention. The technology becomes less like a screen and more like an atmosphere.
I recently encountered this idea while attending SEGD Xlab 2026 in New York, a gathering focused on experimentation, creative practice, and the question of what it means to make things that matter in a rapidly changing world. This year's Xlab was particularly interested in the human side of experience design, asking how designers can create connection, meaning and possibility at a time when technology is accelerating and attention is increasingly fragmented. Rather than confining those conversations to a conference room, Xlab turned New York itself into a laboratory.
(Photo by Hanna Grankvist)
113 Spring: A Living Laboratory
The first day offered a series of behind-the-scenes tours of spaces exploring the future of experience, including 113 Spring in SoHo guided by McCann Systems the AV Integration firm that worked on 113 Spring. SEGD described the space as an experimental retail and wellness laboratory, bringing architecture, technology, storytelling and human-centred design together under one roof. That made the visit to 113 Spring particularly relevant to my thinking about the Fourth Space. I wasn't simply visiting a new wellness destination. I was experiencing a working example of many of the questions being explored at Xlab: How can technology create rather than interrupt human connection? How can immersive experiences encourage us to be more present rather than demand more of our attention? And what happens when digital technology becomes an integrated part of architecture rather than an object competing with it?
Left Photo by Hanna Grankvist, Right Photo by Marcos Terenzio
113 Spring is a particularly compelling example because its ambition extends beyond creating another luxury wellness destination. Its philosophy is that longevity is not simply about living longer. It is about expanding how we think about life itself. The space describes its approach beautifully: longevity should be experienced, not prescribed; curated, not crowd-sourced; expert-led, not left to navigate alone. Living well is framed not as a series of isolated outcomes, but as an ongoing practice rooted in belonging and co-created with others.
Photo by Madison Claire Baker
During the tour, I met with Melissa Bunning, Programs & Partnerships at 113 Spring, who shared insights on the inspiration and philosophy behind this future of retail concept, and I began to see these questions through a very different lens. The space isn't trying to make wellness more technological. It is exploring how technology, architecture, content, community and expert-led experiences can work together to make wellness more tangible, social and human.
Photo by Madison Claire Baker
That philosophy is reflected in its current curatorial theme, The Energy Exchange, which launched in June 2026. Rather than treating energy solely as an individual performance metric, the concept explores energy as a shared resource shaped by relationships and environments. That distinction is important. It turns wellness from something we consume into something we experience together.
Left Photo by Hanna Grankvist, Right Photo by Madison Claire Baker
The 3,000-square-foot space, designed by Snøhetta, brings together products, expert consultations, programming, immersive wellness experiences and spaces for conversation. Its programming can include floral workshops, mindful yoga, collective rituals and product activations. At The Qi Bar, visitors can work with accredited TCM herbalists to create customized herbal blends.
Photos by Madison Claire Baker
But perhaps the most interesting part of 113 Spring is what happens around those experiences. Technology has been deliberately integrated into the architecture rather than placed in front of it. Working with McCann Systems, Modem, and Field,113 Spring uses an intelligent platform called SpringOS to turn the environment into what McCann describes as a "living organism." Sensors and spatial analytics create a live digital understanding of how people move, pause, gather and interact, while environmental conditions such as weather, light and time of day can inform the space's response. The system incorporates LiDAR, generative artwork, procedural audio, reactive lighting, digital mirrors, projection mapping, EEG mind-sensing and spatial analytics. Yet the point is not to showcase the technology. The point is what the technology allows the space to become. At the entrance, digital mirrors respond to movement, distance and energy, creating visuals that appear to breathe with the room. McCann describes these moments as a dialogue between individual and collective presence. The technology isn't asking visitors to interact with a screen. It is responding to their presence.
The Veil is a flexible storytelling canvas that allows the architecture to change with programming, events and community. Projection mapping and generative art can transform the surface into a dynamic layer of light and imagery, while the underlying system allows those experiences to be scheduled, adapted and reinterpreted over time. The Recalibration Room features the Ammortal Chamber, combining PEMF, red and near-infrared light, vibroacoustics, breathwork and molecular hydrogen into an immersive recovery experience. This is a very different model of immersive retail. The immersive experience isn't necessarily look at this. It is feel this space changing around you.
From Distraction to Presence
There is a larger cultural implication here. We often talk about "digital detox" as though technology itself is the problem. I think that is too simplistic. The problem is technology that constantly demands our attention without giving anything meaningful back. The Fourth Space offers another possibility: technology that returns our attention to the physical world. A responsive wall can encourage us to notice another person moving beside us. A shared soundscape can create a collective sense of calm. An ambient digital experience can connect us to patterns found in nature. Spatial technology can make a room feel alive without requiring us to pick up a phone. This is consistent with the broader direction of retail technology. Gartner's 2026 research identifies "ambient invisible intelligence" and spatial computing among the technologies increasingly relevant to customer experience, while its 2026 commerce research points toward hybrid digital-physical engagement and immersive capabilities. The opportunity is to move from technology as interface to technology as environment. That shift could fundamentally change how we design experiential retail.
Designing the Fourth Space
The 2026 Retail Outlook from IA by HumanX Retail is useful here because it frames the emergence of the Fourth Space around the changing human role of physical retail. For designers, developers, and brands, the lesson is not to remove technology from the store. It is to take technology out of the spotlight. Start with the human need. Do people need to recover? Connect? Learn? Make something? Be inspired? Meet someone? Slow down?
Experience nature? Feel part of a community? Then design the physical environment around that need, and use digital systems to make the experience more intuitive, responsive, and memorable.
113 Spring demonstrates what that can look like: an environment where architecture, wellness, community, content, data and technology continually influence one another, while the technology itself remains largely invisible. Its physical components are also intentionally designed for reconfiguration and second-life applications, allowing the experience to evolve every six to eight months rather than becoming a fixed retail installation. That may be the real promise of the Fourth Space: not a store that feels more like technology, but a store where technology helps the space feel more alive. The future of experiential retail won't be won by whoever installs the biggest screen. It will belong to the spaces that understand when the screen should disappear, and what human experience should take its place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARCOS TERENZIO, ALLIED RDI
Marcos Terenzio is Managing Director and Principal of Digital Experience at IA Interior Architects, where he leads IA's global teams in helping clients seamlessly blend digital within physical environments, through strategy, creative, and design of user-centered experiences. Marcos is a talented artist, creative director, experiential designer, and digital visionary with 25 years of international award-winning experience delivering ground-breaking design for retail brands and Fortune 500 clients. He is the Thought Leadership Chair on the Retail Design Institute's Canada Chapter and is a highly regarded subject matter expert in Digital Experience and Immersive Retail Design.
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