IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2015 - 34

THE A
LL

"The most successful new malls will be 'alls,'" says Underhill,
placemakers that offer residential accommodation, white
glove concierge services, and drugstores all under one roof.
Once inhabitants get hooked by the convenience of in-house
premium retail, the buzz spreads locally and drives up the
value of both the shops and the residences. "The most
important customer in New York's Time Warner Center is
the one that can come down in bedroom slippers from their
apartments and shop Whole Foods or Williams-Sonoma,"
says Underhill.

In order to draw moneyed crowds to live and work there,
developments will start to fashion themselves as luxury
villages of commerce. In Dubai's forthcoming colossus, the
Mall of the World, 48 million square feet of retail are
reportedly modeled on Beverly Hill's Rodeo Drive, London's
Oxford Street, and La Rambla in Barcelona. The biggest draw,
however, may not even be the retail: the Mall of the World
will also house a three million square foot medical center for
"wellness tourists" in the region. That gives shoppers the
unique ability to undergo coronary surgery and do a little
retail therapy at Fendi under one roof.
In some cases, a mall might even transform into a city that
never sleeps. At the Fuzhou Wusibei Thaihot Plaza in China,
design firm SPARK envisioned a 24-hour vertical street.
It also offers two separate routes for visitors to navigate,
one for the 12 hours when shops are open, and one for late
night entertainment options.

The precise look of these "alls" depends on the tastes of the
surrounding region, says Rupert Plumpton, associate director
at RTKL and frequent lead designer on shopping mall projects.
He draws a clear distinction between designing interiors in
Russia, where consumers want an escape from the quotidian,
the Middle East, where it's about day-long spectacles, and the
U.S. and E.U. where new shopping malls need a sense of
belonging to the existing location. "It's going to be much
harder for interior designers working on future malls in the
States and Europe," he says. "The modern mall will look like a
refurbished town center, so designers will have to do much
more clever work integrating into existing high streets."
In creating London's O2 complex, which features dining and
retail alongside a 23,000-seat theatre, live music venue and
a cinema, Plumpton's team consciously avoided the visual
repetition common in so many malls. Instead, they evoked the
feel of a city by designing distinct stores modeled on art deco
buildings. RTKL also employed the use of specific materials in
handrails and signage, such as real stone at street level, to
cultivate an exterior look.
Some projects have even flipped the script of the interiorfacing mall. Plumpton's newest design, the Aquis Plaza, is
located in the center of the historic town of Aachen, Germany.
The shops and cafes in this shining glass development
actually open outward to embrace the streets on the perimeter
of the historic square where the building sits.

TOP & BOTTOM

Fuzhou Wusibei Thaihot Plaza courtesy Shu He

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2015