Just as in the United States, an Asian retail environment is shaped by the surrounding socio-cultural environment. And the financial environment. And the legal environment. And the political environment. Demographics, history, and urban context all exert their inexorable pull. Evaluating design and functionality through the prism of these bedrock societal influences can be revealing.
Pondok Indah
A particularly illustrative example is Pondok Indah Mall in Jakarta, Indonesia. Pondok is unique, not only for the circumstances under which it was constructed but for the degree to which it embodies and underscores the East-West dynamic. In some ways Pondok Indah is not dissimilar to an American mall, but in others it is unmistakably Indonesian.
Pondok Indah Mall introduced the American shopping experience to Jakarta and has become an oft-cited example of an American mall identity translated into an Indonesian setting. The effective transfer of American retail technology and planning to Indonesia, in combination with recognizable elements of Indonesian art, society, and retail culture, resulted in a remarkable finished product.
A three-level retail center containing a department store, multiplex cinema, food court, and more than 100 retail options, Pondok Indah’s first phase introduced several new concepts to the region. One was the core logic of the center itself, with all stores facing either a main mall or one of the courtyards. Thoughtfully designed floor setbacks and openings improve sightlines, making it possible to see virtually all of the mall’s stores from any one location.
Designed using American mechanical, lighting, and safety standards, Pondok features notable construction innovations. Steel-truss roof framing, a departure from the more common poured concrete, helps improve interior visibility and expand leasable space. Energy-efficient, double-glazed windows in pyramid-shaped skylights bring in natural light while reducing heat transfer. Aluminum panels on the exterior façade are a low-maintenance solution to the rigors of a harsh tropical climate.
The Pondok Indah design aesthetic exhibits an unmistakable Asian influence. An Indo-Chinese feel predominates, with open courts and soaring, elegant spaces throughout. Pennants, banners, and graphic elements display the bright colors and exuberant pageantry of Southeast Asia. Less obvious, but no less important, is a broad range of additional structural, functional, and architectural details that reveal a great deal about the mechanisms that drive the retail design process not only in Indonesia but throughout Asia.
Acknowledging cultural touchstones through design can have significant benefits. Just as the grim efficiency and myopically unimaginative calculations that informed the design strategies of early American malls have given way in recent years to the recognition that there is a connection between enlivened, activated spaces and profitable places, the design of Asian malls is undergoing a similar philosophical renaissance.
The energy and creativity behind that renaissance have fueled a corresponding flow of inspiration to the United States and Europe. In particular, by successfully embracing the concept of integrated entertainment components with a greater passion and to a greater extent than in the United States, Asian malls like Tai Mall in Taipei, Taiwan, and Bandung SuperMal in Bandung, Indonesia, have shown that heretofore unheard of levels of interactive entertainment can not only work in a retail environment but thrive.
What in the World Is a Mall?
Preexisting civic infrastructure often dictates design decisions. The fundamental question of where — and how — a project will fit into the urban landscape is frequently a more pressing and complicated concern in Asia than in the United States, where, for better or for worse, American developers have traditionally been afforded the luxury of being able to expand into available suburban and quasi-rural areas.
Global retailers like IKEA and Wal-Mart illustrate the dichotomy perfectly. In the United States these companies are uncompromising in their dedication to freestanding, pad-based locations with warehouse-style floor plans. In Asia, on the other hand, IKEA and Wal-Mart stores are frequently sited inside larger malls, with vertical, multi-level layouts.
Paco Underhill, in his book Call of the Mall, writes, ''The Mall is a monument to the moment when Americans turned their back on the city.'' In Asia, where, despite a recent boom in suburbanization, the vast majority of the population lives in densely populated urban areas, malls cannot afford to ''turn their back on the city.''
To the contrary, an Asian mall must embrace the city. Not only must it become a part of the urban landscape, it must bring some of the energy and dynamism of that urban environment inside. In the retail context of metropolises like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai, dramatic lighting, powerful graphics and signage, and an energized retail environment are necessary commodities.
Genus Loci
It is important to remember that the story of Asian malls is as much about limits as it is about possibilities, as much about what ideas to exclude as it is about which to include. The marketplace of ideas flows freely across geopolitical borders, but an intellectual flexibility and a willingness to make allowances for culture and setting can make the difference between a resounding success and a dull thud.
It boils down to this: the place dictates the design and function of a retail environment. Understanding and appreciating what makes a successful mall requires, on a fundamental level, mastering the same information in Asia as one does in America. The data might be different, but the analytical tools and design and development prerequisites are identical. Know your people. Know your place. A well-designed retail space comforts, satisfies, and stimulates the former while honoring the spatial relationships, cultural priorities, and aesthetic synergies of the latter.
Making decisions about how far to push the envelope requires patience, insight, and good judgment, in addition to skill. Finding that ''magic'' spot where new concepts overlap with an appropriate level of cultural comfort is more of an art than a science, but it is not magic. These factors — from cultural and sociological to geophysical — do not exist independently. They interact and feed off of each other in a complex network of factors to create a genus loci — a spirit of place.
As in the examples of Pondok Indah and its contemporaries, once fundamental cultural distinctions have been taken into account, it is then possible to successfully innovate, adding elements that expand boundaries and challenge conventional notions about design and development.
The journey from people and places to blueprints and floor plans is not a long one, and the ultimate destination is well worth the trip.
About the Author
Ahsin Rasheed is senior vice president and director of planning at Baltimore-based Development Design Group Inc., an innovative architecture, planning, and design firm with a history of creating high-profile, high-quality environments around the world, including Pondok Indah.
