ABSTRACT
REFLECTIONS ON NEW URBANITY IN THE ERA OF THE ON-LINE SHOPPING Authors: Dr. Cristian Suau - Welsh School of Architecture (UK), suauc@cardiff.ac.uk Marga Bauza - Welsh School of Architecture (UK)
Untitled, Barbara Kruger (1987)
The Urbanity of the Everywhere If ‘Sense of Place' constitutes an essential motto for many contemporary cities, then it implies a combination of physical and human aspects within the urban society. Nevertheless, the notion of place becomes non-specific, generic, someone diffuse. Cities inevitable live in the ‘Culture of Speed’ ruled by the factor of lightness, instantness and genericness. Nowadays cities compete with each other. As result they are following a systematic hybridisation of the cityscape where trading and communicational networks have drastically been modified. Our planet, mostly in emerging economies, is experiencing a radical transformation in the way customers behave and how retail architecture merges as a vital mechanism in the functioning of the market intermediation. Shopping is experienced by people as amusement. Retail urbanism is defined as a market space (tangible or not) that affects the relationship between supply and demand. Classically it uses 3 key principles: variety, novelty and service. Nevertheless, the staging of the market relationships can follow these premises or can attempt to subvert them. So, shopping can be experienced either warm and cosy or cool and harsh. It implies that the new retail architecture could be found in transgressive spaces that seek to erase, melt or confuse the spatial boundaries between buyers and customers. These effects should to be surveyed beyond aesthetic viewpoints. This study attempts to reflect on what make them more adaptable to overcome changeable urban markets. In doing so, it will be focus in the phenomenon of new places for shopping in European cities.
Shopping Malls as Non-Places Shopping malls are mass-oriented spaces. Generally shops are generous to ensure that there is sufficient space to keep several items of the same model and significant levels of stock were display. Consumers visit these spaces with two objectives: to shop and to have a collective experience. The success of the shopping centres is measured by sales in the shops. The shopping mall needed to be attractive enough for consumers to spend a substantial amount of time their, thereby guaranteeing expenditure of money. In the middle of the 60s, the notion of inner-city shopping mall was introduced in Europe. As result, car parking was provided but in multi-story compact building placed less than 200m from the shopping centre. The footprint of the shopping centre became smaller due to higher values of the land and the lack of large areas of free land implying to compress its extension. Instead the same programme is accommodated in height. In the last fifteen years many people from social science like M. Castells (1996), W. Mitchell (1999), and T. Horan (2000) have been questioning the influence of the digital world. Back in the 90s it was difficult to understand to what extend our cities, even more our everyday-life will mutate due to the introduction of the computer in the working environment and domestic domain. Since the end of the 90s with the introduction of search engines like Google people have been able to find information about everything from everywhere. We all have become familiar users of Internet to the extent that most businesses and individuals cannot longer operate without it. It is habitual nowadays that people do their research before going shopping, reading instructions or even their shopping on-line. This is influencing the shopping trends and defining what we want when we go shopping. Thus the consumer has become a potential costumer who uses the shopping centre as an exhibition centre of goods. The success of shopping malls no longer is measured by its store-sales instead is measured by the foot fall. It is still crucial that the shopping centre attracts lots of costumers to visit the shops because they are potential on-line shoppers, the consumer. We do not go shopping any longer, in the traditional sense. We go browsing. We want a personal and unique experience that takes little time but it last long in our memories. We want entertainment. We want to see, touch and smell a product that we ‘googled’ few days ago. We are open to customised, tailored and individualised products. The Pragmatism of the Urban Market in the Retail Architecture By revising the American development of suburban shopping malls, the notion of shopping centres in Europe has shifted into the consolidation of container within the inner urban fabric. Nevertheless most of these complexes are still not able to deal neither with the urban economical fluctuations nor the customer’s loyalty. Therefore they become less adaptable or polyvalent pieces. These complexes age easily! The shop is not just a reflection of a brand, but an autonomous mechanism that can acquire customers on its own. Beyond the legacy of Learning from Las Vegas, we wonder if retail architecture is still a “(…) screen with a building behind”? What are those new design paradigms of our contemporary culture? What/how do we shop instead? What is the new shape and image of city-based shopping centres? As new attractors, are shopping centres the new public space? Can these complexes (shops) become a public space (street)?
Nowadays –in the era of the electronic purchase- the phenomenon of online shopping pops-up new paradigms: The coexistence of a soft vs. hard shopping. How do malls like massive depots can recuperate the sensorial features of an everyday market life? How can a hybrid space for shopping be thought? Should it be a real and virtual frame as a whole? Case Studies in Europe The analysis of the case studies aims to highlight the differences between them and in relation to the conventional shopping centre for store-shopping. It also attempts to understand what make them more flexible to defeat the ongoing economic models. 1. Almere shopping centre, Almere, The Netherlands It is a Big Mac. This shopping centre is a new formation generated by the juxtaposition of layers. Each layer creates continuity between two suburban parts of a city reconstituting the flows of movements. It has a strategic location. The main support -a fold- holds and unifies the volumes. The programme has been compressed if compared with a traditional shopping centre. Considerable amount of the programme happens underground. The experience of the labyrinth takes place after moving through the main stratum. 2. L’Illa shopping centre, Diagonal, Barcelona Spain This complex gives a response to its context by recomposing the urban area. It has a strategic location in relation to public transport and infrastructure. It is an attractor and sits within an urban relatively high-dense area. The building does not have the vocation to become an icon. However, it can be interpreted as an intelligent artefact –as an “urban chameleon” capable to adapt to any new situation obeying economic changes, fashion trends and so on. The façade of the building is neutral enabling the building to support vary diverse uses. There is an underground street crossing and communicating the complex as well. 3. St David II shopping centre, city centre, Cardiff, UK This shopping centre has a strategic location. It is the prolongation of an existing shopping centre built in the 80s. It wants to evoke the old arcades existing in the surroundings built during the XIX century. It is an ‘exploded’ mall. It was designed with a defined programme. The programme is clearly announced from outside. Thus the complex is prescriptive, evident and predictable body. Finale The shopping centre has become a place where the different brands must advertise themselves. The shop in the shopping centre is an extension of and complementary to the on-line portal. Therefore, the shopping centre is the exhibition space where brands present their products and where customers expect an intense sensory experience where they browse, touch and smell the products. The conventional buyers have been replaced by intrepid customers. The shopping centre is no longer a place for the masses. On the contrary, it is a place for the individual; customised and tailored. The customer continually browses in the shopping centre and on-line for new things, ideas, experiences, for surprises, for the rare. The costumer who visits the shopping centre does not feel the need to buy anything. Therefore the success of shopping centres is measured by foot fall instead of simply sales.
The shopping centre must be generic and flexible to enable mobility and adaptability of spaces available for different brands. Compactness of uses saves space but also intensify sensorial experiences. Whether this trend carries on developing the morphology of the shopping centre will be further affected resembling exhibition or performing spaces. Shopping centres need to re-brand and re-invent themselves to keep up to date with the new demands. The role of the shopping mall is more akin to advertising and branding. The shopping centres may be interpreted as the architecture of casinos, based on sensorial and spatial tricks and bluffs. Then the notion of the shopping mall is a 'third space' 100% influenced by the paradigm of Disneyworld: Entertainment, spectacle and sensory experiences are the main organizational components.
Case Studies in Europe: Almere, Barcelona and Cardiff
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