The goal of the project is ‘to make retail areas go from a place to buy to a place to be’. Retail environments have the potential to become a place to be and add value for visitors, the local community and society as a whole. After performing research on various different levels, both quantitative and qualitative and both with consumers and external stakeholders, new consumer vales emerged for retail areas in the city. They were transparency, connection, atmosphere, exploration and authenticity. Exploration and authenticity were chosen as the two core values to form a design direction. A conceptual model was produced to add value to retail areas: in order to create a place to be, a story and an experience are necessary. The story is what brings authenticity to a place, and that can be achieved using storytelling. An experience can be created through multisensory design and can provide the core value of exploration. Using this model, a possible design was created: the story box. This concept provides a multisensory storytelling experience. The story box is a physical cube placed in the street that tells a story through exploration. Users move around the cube to go through the stages of the discovery process: touch, see and hear.The three sides of the cube are assigned with different colors: green, red and blue. Users then can step inside the box and hear the full story. The experience is not just limited to interacting with the cube, it is extended to interacting with the entire street. Both the effect of the authentic stories and the exploring discovery are extended into the street. For the authentic stories, in addition to the large cube, small cubes using the same colors are placed throughout the street at the entrance of shops and stores. Shopowners can participate in the project and adopt a small cube. These small cubes provide the story of the shop or store in audio, once a visitor places its hand inside the cube. For the exploring journey, small colored tiles are placed on the facades throughout the street. The colors coordinate with the colors of the interactions with the cube: touch, see and hear. The small tiles each provide another little discovery journey: green tiles mean there is something nice to touch, red tiles meansthere is something nice to see and blue tiles mean there is something to hear. The final concept gives meaning to retail areas and provides and authentic story in an exploring way.