Our brief was to re-imagine the idea of the modern shopping centre in order to allow it to exist inside the city instead than in its actual sub-urban role, in a more connected and less disruptive way.
Trade belonged to the public realm in the traditional city. Now commerce is increasingly an activity that belongs in our homes. E-commerce, home deliveries and shopping channels on the television offer an ever increasing chance to avoid leaving home.
Honorable Mention | RTFA 2014 Awards
Category: Commercial Concept
Participant Name: Katarzyna Kolodziejska
Country: Poland
For this reason our core idea is that the contemporary shopping centre should be primarily a supplier of entertainment, through a constant offer of temporary events, to offer that added value to persuade the costumer to leave home. In addition the social dimension of the event has a powerful lure, which can help to sell and give urban energy to a place. The event becomes a symptom of the vitality and success of the shop simply by using the sheer presence of the crowds that it’s capable to create.
Our study of trade and retail architecture was part of a wider work we conducted during our course on how to re-qualify a vast abandoned industrial area in the outskirts of Parma, Italy. Our urban and housing project concentrated on the concept of the event as well. We divided the construction of the required housing into phases creating a slow process launched by an event seen as the force capable of giving new meaning to a place and igniting the process of transformation. Following the idea of the event we designed a mall without walls.
The defined part of the program, like shops, are placed inside a series of structural cylinders. The negative spaces between cylinders are functionally undefined remaining open to any possible use or event. Furthermore we focused our study on the design of a large supermarket inside our structure. The exterior walls are a curtain wall integrated with the shelves of the store. The goods sold in the supermarket create the elevation, constantly redesigned by consumption.