Fong, P. (2003). What makes big dumb bells a mega shopping mall? 4th International Space Syntax Symposium (pp. 10.1-10.14). London: Space Group Publications.
Within this paper, Fong presents a morphological analysis of a mega-scale shopping centre, stating that “the ‘shopping mall’ is a very interesting case in itself, in that it attempts to recreate the scene of natural movement using apparently opposing dynamics. Fong takes on the idea that shopping centres are an attraction for consumers through a series of specific design installations that are replicated from the external market, and improved to create a more desired shopping experience.
“Shopping malls are built to replicate the retail offer in established city centres, providing comparison shopping in a ‘continuous’ selling space on goods... all under one roof” (pg 10.1)
Fong, specifically focussing upon the movement throughout the shopping mall, states that “a critical approach within architectural discourse misses the opportunity to raise interesting questions concerning their design in terms of how natural laws of movement are seemingly opposed inside a shopping mall.”
Fong perceives that the classic dumb-bell concept, (large anchors at conflicting ends) is an important factor within mall dynamics in attracting consumers into and through the mall. (See below)
(The Urban Land Institute, 2002)
The Urban Land Institute (2002) provides a basic design diagram of the spatial elements of a typical regional shopping centre.
The natural movement economy theory proposed theory by Hiller (1993, 1996) is opposed to shopping mall design, stating that “Natural movement is the proportion of movement on each line that is determined by the structure of the urban grid itself rather than by the presence of specific attractors or magnets.” (Hillier, 1996: 161)
Fong explores the question of do planned shopping malls obey natural laws of movement, such that the distribution of movement can be predicted by the pattern of relative integration in the configuration.
Fong states through his analysis that from the point of view of mall design, minimising integration differences seems to be the objective of mall designers when thinking of the shopping centre as a managed ‘asset’. The main concern of mall managers’ and developers’ is rent optimisation, which is best achieved by ensuring an evenness of foot traffic to all its tenants. It would appear that although principles of attraction do have contributory effects on the distribution of movement through the arrangement, placement and allocation of space in the tenant mix process, configuration still provides a stronger predictive power, yet the addition of an attractor value increases the predictive value considerably.
Pong concludes that through her analysis, there is reasonable evidence that configuration has a direct relationship with the distribution of movement within planned, artificial shopping centre environments; hence, configuration has a stronger prediction than anchors, attractors or magnets.
Kuribayashi, Y., & Kishimoto, T. (2009). Configurational Comparison of City Centre Shopping District and Shopping Mall, with Observation of Shop Locations. In D. Koch, L. Marcus, & J. Steen (Ed.), 7th International Space Syntax Symposium (pp. 061:1-061:10). Stockholm: KTH.
Overview of Text
Kuribayashi and Kishimoto found that the shopping districts of major cities have been declining. The change in customer needs and the increase in the automobile consumption have led the public to shop in the convenient shopping malls. This circumstance has induced an additional problem of the weakening of interrelationship between the individual shops within the district which is crucial in means of both the local economy within in these districts and their surrounding community.
Kuribayashi and Kishimoto applied the Space Syntax Theory conducted by Polly Fong in designing the pedestrian movement within a commercial space to apply this theory to a city’s domestic shopping district to reveal the natural law of human attraction to the certain classification of shops. The paper discovers the successful point of the creation of commercial space by ‘shopping malls’, and compared them to the ‘shopping district’.
Through using the Space Syntax values, Kuribayashi and Kishimoto analysed four sample commercial spaces; two city centre shopping districts, Jiyugaoka and Daikanyama, and two shopping malls, Outletpark Iruma and Lalaport Yokohama. Through this analysis, the results showed that the sampled shopping malls were successful in attracting the pedestrians to the core compared to the sampled city centre shopping districts. Also, it was shown that the matching of customers’ behavioural pattern and shop locations are significant in the creation of successful shopping environments.
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