SYMBIOSIS WITHIN URBAN
1st Prize Winner ($29,000)
3rd International Shopping Plaza Concept
Urban Complex
Role: Concept Design & Drawings
Collaborator: Haoran Wang,
Shan Qi, Qiliang Tang
While the workers' club, which was prevalent in the Soviet Union a hundred years ago, was a "social container" of the zeitgeist, nowadays, the commercial center is gradually becoming the largest public space. In the current shopping malls, efficiency has been increasingly diluted: people no longer come to the mall with direct shopping purposes; quite the opposite, experience and entertainment are the main factors that gather people.
Seven different types of public programs are introduced into the TOD center to attract people. The various businesses have been rationally arranged and have a relationship of affiliation and symbiosis with different public programs, thereby enhancing the customer's accessibility and experience. Thus, it makes the commercial plaza a real 'public mall' for the urban.
The concept comes from the sponge. The porous skin of the sponge allows seawater to pass through and filter nutrients through the cavity. The relationship between mall and customers can be considered as sponges: shopping mall attracts the flow of customers by public programs, and the public programs activate the surrounding businesses. The innovation of this urban complex is the consistency between commerce and public programs. Learned from the sponge, we opened the permeable fifth facade - roof, to the city. People can either come to the roof from the ground or city light. The public programs are emphasized to attract people to enter the shopping center from the roof and explore the interior space.
