Filling Stations of the Future
Ever since we started using motor vehicles, facilities that handled the distribution of its fuel played an important part of our lives. It is fair to say that over the years, as we became more and more dependent on them, we could consider ourselves now a petrol station generation with standardized oil company solutions visible on almost every corner on the globe.
But as the car has evolved in parallel to our lives, being heavily influenced on our history, filling station development did not somehow catch up. Designs were either centered around the function, forgetting about the comfort of the user, or the aesthetics which resulted in nonfunctional beautiful iconic structures that were more like building sculptures – expensive in erection, maintenance, and finally dismantling.
Some other solutions were just purely related with the necessity to answer quickly to changing needs in retail.
The big breakthrough came during the eighties when the Retail Visual Identity (RVI) appeared. A design that was focused on a repeatable network design that could bring more comfort to the filling experience making it as simple, convenient, and stress-free as possible.
By using color, form, lighting, and clear and readable signs, together with architectural elements like a big roof that acts as a shelter from the rain, a more pleasant environment was created in the uncluttered forecourts. Together with an ease of use of equipment, clean and accessible lavatories, easy payment procedures, and additional services, it was a revolution as the concept was later copied around the world in many locations and created the form of a modern petrol station as we know it.
After more than 30 years, it is time and necessary to go one or a couple of steps further.
Due to changing conditions related to resources harvesting and climate change we need to alter our approach and develop a new design of servicing cars based on performance. As it is hard to predict the new oil crisis and the development of electric cars, it ought not to be solutions for the far distant future but for the coming years already. A pragmatic design of filling stations easily adaptable to any fuel scenario with sustainability incorporated in their very core could make maximum use of natural resource harvesting together with innovative solutions to generate electric energy.
To save the environment there is not one thing that an individual can do. This needs to be a massive movement on a global scale. The change could start in petrol stations. Just like the RVI revolutionized the World in the twentieth century, now it is time for a new change to come – RVI 2.0
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