Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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N E W S M A K E R S F or 25 years Ignaz Gorischek was charged with designing and executing visual displays for Nei- man Marcus. Whether a 14-foot-tall Christmas tree made from vintage automobile parts and tail lights, or plastic crawl-through tunnels in store windows, Gorischek defied imagination with displays that made Nei- man Marcus shoppers stop, look, engage and sometimes gasp. "I call [visual displays] speed bumps, because they can cause you to slow down and make you take notice of the re- tail environment," said Gorischek. "I'm big on dwell time in stores. You're in the store for a reason. Why not give shoppers more of a reason to engage with the store?" Gorischek's work has drawn accolades from a range of sources, such as Design:Retail magazine, which awarded him the Markopoulos Award in 1997, or the mother of a young cancer patient at a Texas hospital, who said Gorischek's transforming her son's crayoned drawings into holiday window art changed the boy's life. "Sometimes creative endeavors are about way more than selling someone something," Gorischek said. This year, after 25 years with Neiman Marcus, Gorischek joined international design consulting firm CallisonRTKL as vice president of its retail design group. "I wanted to be involved with a multitude of different types of projects and experiences," he said. "I also wanted the opportunity to work internationally, something I haven't been able to do in previous positions." CallisonRTKL, in turn, is eager to harness Gorischek's con- nections, creativity and vision. "Ignaz thinks of retail design in just a completely different way," said Eric Lagerberg, a Calli- sonRTKL executive vice president and the firm's global practice group leader for retail stores. "He's always looking for inspira- tion. He finds it in everything from car shows to traffic jams." Gorischek never intended to enter the visual design field. He knew nothing about the industry when he started at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, as an advertising major in the Ignaz Gorischek brings retail sensibility to CallisonRTKL's design practice By Anna Robaton BY DESIGN E X ECU T I V E M O V E RS A ND S H A K E RS L M C O M M ERCI A L RE A L E S TAT E A N D O L S H A N P RO P ER T IE S BEEF U P T H EIR M A N AG E M E N T T E A M S 5 8 M EE T RYA N C O CK ERIL L , AG REE RE A LT Y 'S N E W DIRECTO R O F DE V ELO P ER S O L U T I O N S 5 9 56 S C T / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6