MALL AS SHOWROOM

“We shop for you”

SHENZHEN

HONGKONG

2. Research

2.1 The City’s Shopping Malls

The investigation of shopping malls and their publicness is of particular importance in the context of Shenzhen. Located in the southeast of China bordering Hongkong, Shenzhen is a young city born as China’s first Special Economic Zones in the 80s, a stretch to incorporate market economy within a rigid socialist system1. The influence of such economic and political experiments further defines Shenzhen’s landscape as the testing ground for China’s neoliberal urbanization.

These old pictures capture that initial excitement for a globalized market and the ambition of a new Chinese city, when McDonald’s made sales history as it opened its first chain in China in Shenzhen’s first shopping street, Dongmen. In the early 90s, the emerging Chinese middle class considered going to McDonald’s a sign of privilege - lining up for two hours, ordering small portions of food, dating, meeting friends, and even having meetings2. The “fast” food restaurant started to accommodate people for hours, and this global franchise was unintentionally transformed into a new public space, serving as a park, public living room, and public bathroom.

Unlike other major cities in China, there is little historical context to resist the vast urbanization agenda based on new policies. With the vast amount of vacant land, the huge influx of migrant workers, and global investment, Shenzhen soon became an exciting testing ground for new commercial activities, claiming many of China’s first: first sino-foreign joint retail chain, first Walmart, first experience-based shopping mall3

With the economic boom, shopping malls soon claimed increasing importance in the urban landscape as both a product for land investment and venues for consumption, integrated with transportation infrastructure. Shenzhen also has the largest under-construction shopping malls area globally in 20174.

MALLS, MALLS

A survey on personal memories of shopping malls

12.What are your memories about malls?

- Pulled all-nighters to prepare for presentations

- Playing basketball and dance arcade games with my mom. And eat mango puddings.

- I went to the game arcade every Friday with friends in highschool.

- I had the majority of my dates in malls.

- Ice rinks in malls. It was my first time feeling “icedcold” as Shenzhen is so hot all the time.

- Just chilling with friends.

- I will go to malls if I don’t know what to do on weekends. Eat, shop, watch movies, and repeat - anything really with my friends. And when my friends come over to Shenzhen I always take them to malls - it’s a default!

- Malls are bright, spacious, and always smell luxurious. A good place to be - especially with the Cantonese restaurants on the top floors.

- I love the old department stores as a kid. Start from the top floor - tried on clothes, and then to second floor to watch CDs on screen, and then go to the ground floor for the free fruit samples.

- New year countdowns with friends.

- I spent the majority of my summers in malls - because my parents were at work and I did not want to be home alone. I would go to the arcades or find a cafe to do some homework, and wait until my parents picked me up

A survey conducted with a random sample of local Shenzhen residents further reveals the reliance on shopping malls on a daily basis. Malls just seem to be an inevitable destination - even if no shopping actually happens. Most of us like malls; 70% agreed that “Shenzhen people grew up in malls”; And most of us feel like there are too many malls in Shenzhen.

The survey also revealed a series of non-commercial, unplanned or underplanned activities already appropriating the usual commercial activities in malls. From dropping children here as “daycare”, watching free live stream from the LED screens, using the malls as public transit nodes, or simply chilling in the atrium for free air-conditioning, theses activities suggest the inadequacy for existing mall services and the needs to enable activities beyond shopping as important urban nodes.

However, shopping malls are also having a hard time exciting their customers as the places to shop with the repeating commercial set-up. 2/3 of the people I surveyed said there were too many malls and they were getting boring. Imagine your weekend spent in a pseudo-public space with pseudo fun - Fun is hedonistic, consumptive, homogeneous, and - boring!

Under such neoliberal approach to urban expansion, our city seems to forget about the entertainment outside of the closed world of shopping. The hedonistic fun generated by shopping is short-termed and consumptive. But what is real fun? Real fun’s value lies in it being long-term, non-commodifiable, experience-based, and including social and cultural exchange.

2.2 Shopping is Changing...!

Despite the expansion of shopping malls on an urban scale, due to the booming e-commerce and the pandemic, the vacancy rate of shopping malls has been on a steady rise since 2016, to around 9% in 20205. Currently, the land use area under retail is 86 square kilometers in Shenzhen6 with a 2 square kilometers annual increase, and 6 square kilometers vacant.

Shopping mall is everywhere ---> Everywhere is shopping mall

In the recent decade, shopping is no longer confined to shopping malls but seeks to be integrated seamlessly with the city. Many urban villages are now redeveloped from mainly residential to mainly commercial.

Shopping mall is everything ---> Everything is shopping mall

Luxury brands also step out of shopping malls for exposure and occupy daily venues. For example, the recent Prada campaign in Shanghai turned an old vegetable market into a pop up store. However, such take-over is not integrative or mutual: These spaces are now made unaffordable to their common users, and these local venues and cultures can not afford to make a come-back through hacking into the shopping malls.

2.3 Theoretical Framework

On a broader framework, shopping’s encroachment on our everyday lives and cities has long been a topic of discussion. First the shopping malls attract us to its closed world of retail with diverse commodities; And as malls developed to be growingly attractive for more and longer visits for profit, they also transcended their commercial functions to be the new social and communities hubs in the American suburbs. As the shopping mall typology spread globally, the act of shopping or consumerism is also growingly linked with pleasure, thus bringing about ”the transformation of urban spaces into malls without building a mall”7 worldwide.

Despite the differences in their settings, one thing that prompts the booming of shopping malls in both American suburbs and Chinese cities is the lack of critical public space. The public space in China, unlike that of the west, is a complex and confusing “cluster concept”8 of public infrastructure and green space system moderated by the state, which oftentimes become strategic tools for the efficient operation of the economic and political system. The general lack of civic discourse, the out-of-scale planning, and the varied degrees of public accessibility urge the reimagination of public space that emphasize accessibility, self-initiation, and bottom-up occupation. Here is where shopping malls might provide a potential opportunity: By being common venues populated throughout the city and social hubs enjoyed by the residents, shopping malls may begin to fill in certain missing criterias of the existing public space.

To argue for a more public future for the shopping mall subsequently challenges and subverts some of its existing infrastructure designed for the purpose of maximizing profit. On the typological specifications of shopping malls, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping and Mall City investigate the various mall infrastructure from escalators, air conditioning, to transportation connection and their use in generating revenue on an urban scale, each of which the design component of the thesis will try to repurpose for more public, non-commercial uses.

3. Design

A clear distinction to be made here between the American dead malls and Chinese malls is their different relationship to the urban fabric. While the suburban shopping malls in America “ruptured the already fragmented urban fabric”9, the Chinese shopping malls discussed in the thesis are inherently urban by embedding themselves within the grid of skyscrapers in Shenzhen and with the public transportation system.

As the shopping malls situate at infrastructural nodal points, with a series of public platforms inserted, the shopping malls may together create a new public infrastructure throughout the city.

3.2 Design Manifesto

The design proposes strategies and features of public platforms in existing shopping mall infrastructure to expand the definition of public space in Shenzhen. Four interventions for learning, playing, resting, and gathering take advantage of the vacant areas in malls and interrupt the closed world of retail to make malls more accessible for the public. On a broader framework, the thesis seeks to address ways to re-appropriate underused urban typologies in order to create and protect space for collective fulfillment.

3.3 In the Case of MixCity Mall

For the specific intervention, I am choosing the Mixcity Mall in Luohu, the first contemporary mall in Shenzhen. The mall is located in one of the earliest urbanized areas in Shenzhen, with vicinity to Hongkong, Luohu transportation station, as well as the old Dongmen shopping street. This is a mature commercial area with about 10 regional malls within 1KM of distance.

Being one of the most prestigious malls in Shenzhen, MixCity attracts many high-end fashion brands like Dior, Gucci, and LV with good location and reduced rent. However, next to these luxury brands are dying department stores and smaller retailers with high turn-over rates that are struggling to survive. These vacant or underused floor areas provide a pressure point for public interventions that open up the closed world of shopping malls.

The proposed public platforms then occupy the vacant retail space around the mall’s boundary, and expand the jurisdiction boundaries of the street into the shopping mall. Together, each platform extends into the main circulation of the shopping mall, hoping to form a new circulation for public activities. These interventions take advantage of the existing infrastructure in the shopping mall, i.e. the stairs, restrooms, lighting system, escalator, and facade, to provide essential services to the visitors.

Coming out of the subway, each of the interventions take on a task to stage public activities, mimicking a public space typology. The first intervention is a learning plaza, second is a playground located by the atrium, stop 3 is the amenity hub, and lastly at the vertical garden, which connects to the park by the river. The visitors anticipated by these interventions also expand from the typical mall users, i.e. those who can afford to shop in malls, to everyone who seeks public space: can delivery guys come here and charge in between trips? Can children roam around and play?

Axon of MixCity Mall with all the interventions

The first platform creates a celebrated entrance as people come out from the subway, open for showing, learning and making. In contrast to the short-termed, consumption-based reward from shopping, this knowledge hub invites citizens for repeated visits for cultural events, long-term training, as well as the maker hub that encourages people to get productive with what they learn. The hub disrupts the continuous glass facade of the shopping mall to highlight the show on stage amid the commercial advertisements.

Going further into the mall, the next intervention converts the redundant circulation corridor into a playground for play and rest. Playing in shopping malls has long resided only in the fifth floor kids world. This intervention breaks that confinement by giving back the oblique surface for sliding, climbing and resting to everyone. The escalators that are supposed to take people to shop from one floor to another now only take people to the slides that lead back to the atrium.

Continuing down the main circulation, the next intervention is an urban amenity hub also opening up to the street. Shopping malls tend to hide deep inside all the essential services - bathrooms, water fountains, charging ports, which excludes non-customers, such as delivery guys and street janitors. This amenity hub takes over one of the service corridors with bathrooms, water, and electricity, for people to recharge both themselves and their scooters in Shenzhen’s hot weather 24/7.

The last intervention makes use of the floor-to-ceiling facade at the side entrance as a vertical garden. The garden is an extension of the riverside park, creating a tower of oasis. Each layer has different vegetation that guides people to meander and discover. At the end of the journey is a roof garden that rewards people with the view along the river.

Hybrid section through all the interventions

Together, these interventions open up the closed facade of the shopping malls, take-over shopping mall amenities for public use and challenge the threshold of what’s public and what’s private. These platforms provide venues for ordinary and daily activity, creating long-term fulfillment beyond shopping. Now the shopping mall has become a real social hub - where people of different ages and occupations are welcomed to learn, play, rest, and grow. As shopping malls continue to face challenges in the age of e-commerce, these public platforms might serve as the initial anchor points to transform the obsolete structure for public goods and collective fulfillment.

4. Appendix

4.1 Final Review

May 12th, 2022

Milstein L.P. Kwee Wood Floor Session 2

11:00 - 12:00

Faculty Critics:

Jesse LeCavalier

Erin Pellegrino

Leslie Lok

Chris Battaglia

Guest Critics:

Aurélie Frolet

Hadas Steiner

Learning Plaza

Playground

Amenity Hub

Vertical Garden

5. Bibliography

Work Cited

Wong, Winnie Won Yin, Jonathan P. G. Bach, and Mary Ann O’Donnell, eds. Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Crawford, Margret. “A World in a Shopping Mall” in Variations on a theme park the new American city and the end of public space. Edited by Michael Sorkin. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.

Wang, Yiming. Pseudo-Public Spaces in Chinese Shopping Malls: Rise, Publicness and Consequences. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429242823.

Mitrašinovic, Miodrag, and Timothy Jachna, eds. The Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area: Approaches to Public Space in a Chinese Megaregion. New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780429350948.

Xie, Liyan. “Magnificent 40 Years: Looking Back on Shenzhen’s Business Development” Winshang, http://news. winshang.com/html/067/6313.html.

Zhang, Xiaoduan. “Shenzhen Retail Report - Q3 2020,” Cushman & Wakefield, https://cw-gbl-gws-prod. azureedge.net/-/media/cw/marketbeat-pdfs/2020/q3/apac-and-gc-marketbeat-reports/china--shenzhen--retailq3-2020-en.pdf?rev=a3de57caae724ed19c4020113003ff8f

“Shenzhen Land and Spatial Planning (2018 - 2035),” Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources. 2018.