Shopping Mall Design Task

Recently the group joined a competition in S.E. China for a mixed-use building, with retail, office, hotel, and garden. I was assigned to participate in the shopping mall portion of the design.

When contemplating what shopping malls should be like, here are the starting points:

Shopping malls should be:

-      - Infinite loop, no dead end

-     -  Clear circulation pattern, visible and at the same time easy for people to understand the space.

-      - Introduce natural light, greens into the space.

-       -What is the sequence of space?

-       -What kind of experience would u like to create?

-      - Any specific ancient/existing geographical fixtures in this province?

With these thoughts and questions in mind, here are the analyses of shopping mall evolution through out the history period:

In the past, “shopping malls” are appearing as the market form.  They are usually grounded to earth. Because of their ground-spirited, “shopping malls” are perfectly in human scale. The developments of ancient “shopping malls” are usually developed from a corner/intersection, to a street, then to a district.

When international modernism taken place during 30s, buildings become mass-produced, and then they become current “shopping malls”: They are couple-storey-buildings with one or multiple openings/atrium in the middle. Main circulation is usually located around the openings. To distinguish between successfully shopping mall from not so populated ones, I think there are these aspects:

1.     Clear and regular circulation path that is easy to be understood to visitors. Human being has the will to control, to comprehend the environment they are in. If the circulation is sprinkled around without visibility, the space would feel as a maze. When the sense of control cannot be accomplished, this space would be uncomfortable for the most groups.

2.     It is in human scale, or it is divided and fit in human scale.

3.     Introduce the connection of earth and sky by introducing natural light into the space.

4.     Shape of the openings.

The future trend of shopping mall would be the vertical version, or the stack version of 1^st period; plus the 2^nd type of main circulation. In other words, the scale of shopping mall is divided into pockets of clusters, with integration of gardens on different levels. There is a hierarchy of scale: from each cluster(could be a floor or 2 floors) which shares a garden and secondary vertical circulation, to the main atrium that tight up the space as a whole. In this period, shopping mall re-introduce human beings back to nature, as well as back to social interaction that is lacked off in the current period.