Shopping Center Urbanism of Singapore

The shopping mall has reached new heights in Asia, with their retail centers growing in size, power, and significance. Alongside this, the Asian mall continuous to prosper and evolve into new appropriated forms. Though one cannot discredit the booming economy of the East, the strategic design elements of these commercial spaces ensure their stability as world renown shopping centers. This especially holds true in the case of Singapore, South East Asia's prime tourism and business hub. Its most popular area is Orchard Road, a 2.5 mile stretch of 22 malls, restaurants, office towers, apartments, and hotels which is heavily populated during any point of the day. Though it is not located in the proper downtown sector of the city, Orchard Road's high density and verticality are not uncommon for the small city-state. In addition, the malls of Orchard Road all successfully compete against one another yet maintain a symbiotic relationship to prevent the abandonment of one of their own. This dynamic interaction between the shopping centers is what makes Orchard Road so unique and very likely its cause of success. But the cause of this dynamicism are the techniques used to both create a coherent shopping district while producing discrete shopping malls. By re-affirming previous techniques in mall planning, catering towards cultural tendencies, and introducing an architectural spectacle, the Asian - and specifically the Singaporean - malls have formed a shopping urbanism within the city.

The Asian mall did not form out of isolation, but rather consciously evolved from the previous iterations that existed in the West. Aware of Victor Gruen's ideologies of malls and the public sphere, malls in Singapore have become the major public spaces within the city. With its dense urban environment and uncomfortable humidity, Singapore is unfamiliar with the Western ideals of the public square. In Asia, shopping is "not a simple consumerist frenzy but an authentic essence of urban life, its equipment Asia's equivalent of the agora" (Koolhaas, 1051). Partly to provide for the people - and partly in fear of the troubles that ensue from idleness - Singapore's government has supported the increase of activities and public life within shopping centers.

By including a range of leisure activities within the malls, the social interactions expand beyond people watching and accidental encounters at the public plaza. In EC Harris's Delivering Successful Shopping Malls in Asia, the company takes notes that "...on the whole, shopping malls are typically viewed not just as somewhere to run errands or make specific purchases but as a place in which to go and interact with family and friends" (Jacques). Placing importance on the shared activities that all participants can easily access is key in the Asian mall experience. "For many consumers [in Asia] a trip to the mall will typically include some form of leisure activity whether that is dining, karaoke or a visit to the cinema. The range of leisure options on offer can help turn the mall into a unique destination and help build a loyal consumer base" (Jacques). These non-retail experiences are key factors that not only help draw in customers but also keep them within the shopping center. When watching a movie, what would have been an hour trip to the mall now becomes three, or even more if dinner is involved. Alongside Orchard Road, many different leisure and social spaces are placed amongst the retail.

It is the type of leisure that the mall provides that brands it. By selecting to offer certain activities, specific ages, genders, workers, and nationalities will congregate. This is one method how the shopping centers separate themselves. For the younger crowd, cheap, out-doorsy, and tech savvy entertainment activities are used. In addition to the three large-scale movie theaters throughout Orchard Road, Singapore's first 'youth park' attracts a lot of teenagers and young adults. The park, aptly named S-Cape as an getaway joint, is attached to the shopping mall Cineleisure, which has begun to brand itself for the younger generation. S-Cape includes cafes, a music venue, and a skate park that can be used throughout the day and night. As for Cineleisure, the mall brings in the younger clientele during the off-time of skating. "Attracting mostly youths and teens, the mall stays bustling and vibrant with a myriad of leisure activities by housing a popular karaoke chain and e-gaming centre" (Cathay Cineleisure). Complimenting the retail are an arcade, movie theater, karaoke center, photo-booths, and video game lounge, providing 24 hour entertainment for the younger generation.

To cater to an older crowd, as well as to remain active after the 9 - 5 work hours, some of the malls within Singapore incorporate bars and clubs into their infrastructure. Orchard Towers, two towers of primarily offices but with a few floors of retail, has many bars and restaurants that attract a late-night consumer base. Also known as one of the select places where prostitution is allowed in Singapore, Orchard Towers has an eclectic mix of users from morning to night. Such places as 3 Monkeys Cafe "...provides the best after-dark entertainment right in the heart of the city... [with] Singapore's very own stand-up comedian Kumar, the Queen of drag" (Lim, New Paper). With its unique conglomeration of sex shops, bars, groceries, and offices, Orchard Towers stands out as a center for adult usage.

A remnant of Singapore's old colonial past, multiple districts intended for certain ethnicities continue to exist: Chinatown, Little India, Arab Street, and Bugis (for Indonesians). Though they are no longer areas of segregation, the zones hold on to the cultural language of their home country while attracting a similar costumer base. In the downtown sector of Singapore, Bugis Junction and the newly constructed mall Bugis+ are densely packed with small local shops with traditional Chinese and Indonesian shop-house storefronts. Mimicking the open market just across the street, the two malls attract a high percentage of Indonesian shoppers who would normally be found in the market. Another prime example is Lucky Plaza, right at the heart of Orchard Road. On Sundays, when most maids have the day off, the mall "...turns

into an urban village in the Philippines, full of Filipina maids chatting and eating with

friends, and flirting with Filipino men" (Coclanis, 16). The shopping center opens up as a large social ground all the while selling phone cards for the Philippines, specifically catering towards its clientele.

Alongside these leisure activities are public events that happen within the malls to create sense of community. The aforementioned Cineleisure mall hosts concerts for local bands, singing competitions, and dance offs (Cathay Cineleisure). The nearby shopping megastructure Ngee Ann City has a courtyard space where road shows, concerts, performances, and yearly functions take place, such as its New Year's Eve Countdown. One of Singapore's most recent additions is the massive ION Orchard shopping mall, taking the place of what was once a public park. The previous park was often unused due to the lack of activities, poor weather, and dangerousness at night. In its stead, ION Orchard features the largest public square on Orchard Road. "At 33,000 square feet, this outdoor space will be an ideal venue for large scale national events or gatherings of all sizes, and a natural meeting point. Some 200,000 pedestrians are within its immediate vicinity every day of the year" (ION Orchard). Thus far, this space has been often used for runway shows and the screening of national events. Centrally located at the intersection of Orchard Road and Scotts Road, ION Orchard is placed between four other malls and a subway station, but due to its popular plaza, the mall itself has become a distinct destination.

In addition to following Gruen's patterns of public space, the malls of Asia held on to the techniques from each of their appropriate cultures. Embracing cultural norms of the South East Asian area, the malls in Singapore do not try to impose a new doctrine, but rather re-appropriate certain lifestyle tendencies and designs for their benefit. Architecturally speaking, one of the most unique aspects of Asian malls compared to those of the West is the conglomeration of small, local shops branching within a larger urban development - sometimes even without physical walls between stores. Margaret Crawford notes that these "...Asian versions [of malls] in Hong Kong and Singapore [have] adapted local marketplace traditions, filling vast malls with small, individually owned shops" (Crawford, 11). Not just found in Singapore, this grouping of shops is found throughout South East Asia, creating a "...significant...urban typology, urban structure and public space... [where] many of them [shopping centers and stores] are located adjacent to each other in 'clusters'" (Wall, 25). Reminiscent of a bazaar or wet-market, which are still popular today primarily for produce and seafood, many shopping centers not only allow for the collection of privately owned stores but also design specifically for it. Within Singapore's Orchard Road, this can be seen in most of the basement levels of the malls. With the smaller (and cheaper) stores at the underground levels, these spaces can be divvied up amongst many retailers. Additionally, within malls such as Bugis+ and Far East Plaza, the traditionally linear passageways are broken up with curving, intersecting paths, much like a street market.

Another element of these shopping centers that stems from the culture is the emphasis on food. Of course, most if not all malls throughout the world include food and beverage (F&B) and many have their own food courts. However, what separates the Asian food court from the Western one is the draw of the food. Rather than quick, pre-prepared fast-food options within the food court, the Asian mall provides an array of decently priced local favorites from each of the corners of Asia: Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, and Singaporean cuisine. The food court is no longer supplementary for the retail, but is its own consumer magnet for the mall. "Asian consumers attach significant importance to things like sit-down restaurants, food courts, grab & go outlets and coffee shops. The quality of the F&B offering will have a direct correlation on who visits the mall so a significant proportion of space should be allocated to these commodities" (Jacques). Once again, using the 'clusters' method of store placement, the food courts formulate a whole, walk-able marketplace of food options, rather than a purely concentric layout. However, it is through the popularity of the food court that sparks competition amongst malls. Since all customers, regardless of the clientele base they fit under, desire affordable, varied, and quality food, each mall tries to outdo the other with larger food courts and more options.

The final element that is crucial to the Asian mall's success is the exuberance of architecture. Reluctant to settle for just a Big Box structure or a basic storefront, the malls in Asia have hired well known architects to create hypertrophied festival malls that immediately catch a possible customer's eye. The architects take advantage of the density of the city and the open canvas that they're permitted to produce large-scale, vertical structures that visually compete with one another. Here is where true competition between malls takes place. Desiring to be seen as a distinct shopping destination, each mall amplifies its autonomy and flaunts its design. As the company EC Harris writes, "consumers like external facades that demonstrate scale and ambition and which lend themselves to photo opportunities e.g. at night imaginative LED systems typically prove popular in Asia" (Jacques). By unique architectural entities, each mall becomes an identity and interacts with the customer. In the case of ION Orchard, the architecture firm Benoy (famous for their other intricate and space-age designs such as Bullring in Birmingham, UK) refers to their design for ION Orchard as "...an exercise in simplicity, efficiency and sustainability and now delivers an iconic contribution to the Singapore skyline" (ION Orchard). Far from simple, the bulbous facade is wrapped with what Benoy calls media architecture. This fluid canvas of screens showcases multimedia art and 'live' telecasts of global, national, and local events. Inspired by Orchard Road's history of once being an orchard, Benoy employs tree-like towers to lift the structure above its public plaza, acting as "...an urban seed that would lead to a dynamic re-imagination of Orchard Road" (Benoy).

The multimedia facade is becoming popular as new additions to Orchard Road incorporate such design as well. At Palais Renaissance, the mall spent SGD$ 16 million (US$ 13mil) on revitalizing their image (Lim, New Paper). The architectural lighting designer from Light Design Inc, Hiroyasu Shoji, created a double-skin glass facade with musical dancing lights. Though the original structure is much older and its traditional skeleton frame remains, by inventing an enticing exterior, Palais Renaissance has successfully fought back in securing its place within Orchard Road.

Orchard Central's facade is entirely composed of glass, visually opening up the mall, inviting guests in. Fragmented panels of glass form crystalline shapes while the disjointed boxed spaces create a mismatched visual aesthetic that refrains from becoming too labyrinthine. These boxed spaces, pop-outs, and recessed areas are "...designed to be a surface for social interaction... [creating] shaded verandah spaces for people to travel and overlook the street life below" (AgFacaDesign). The exterior envelope is referred to as a web of glass panels, LED lights, and interactive digital artwork from local artists. From its exterior, one can enter through a 'super escalator', taking the passenger immediately to the core of the fourth floor, as a direct route into the mega structure. As Singapore's tallest shopping center, Orchard Central's twelve floors can be managed with the 52 escalators that climb throughout the building to experience not just retail but seven internationally commissioned artwork installations worth over SGD$ 9 million (US$ 7.2mil) (AgFacaDesign).

By applying these techniques of architectural extravagance, local appropriation and clustering, and public spaces with leisure activities, these individual malls successfully attract thousands of visitors daily - both locally and on an international scale. The sheer amount of money the malls can afford to spend on external appearance alone gives insight to the profits that they are making. Sandwiched within a heated environment of consumerism, capitalism, and competition, each individual mall uses these techniques to create a name for themselves. Similar to being in the animal kingdom, the malls fight to survive. Each shopping center must either provide something unique, cater towards a certain consumer, outshine in quality, or visually charm a prospective shopper to gain success.

Besides just being successful businesses, these shopping centers provide these dense Asian cities the public urban environment that they require. In fact, rather than following the Western pattern of a mall becoming its own city (e.g. the Mall of America or King of Prussia Mall), here the city itself becomes a mall. The 2.5 mile strip of Orchard Road is consumed by all of these shopping centers. In a fascinating way, these malls - which have fought so eagerly to separate themselves from the collective - work together to create a cohesive urban shopping district. Paradoxically, the same techniques that isolate each mall is used to form a symbiotic relationship amongst the malls to create a single, mass shopping district: Orchard Road. Using clusters, Orchard Road harmonizes the array of malls into a single agglomeration. No longer is clustering applied to just the interior, here each mall is packed next to each other with underground passageways interlocking them into a seamless shopping center, never having to physically egress a building. With each mall branded towards a certain age, ethnicity, and wealth of a customer, they echo the appearance and role individual stores within a mall - independently functioning but coming together for a mixed array of consumers within the mall as a whole.

In regards to the public spaces that the malls provide, it is the inter-space that becomes a shared open space for the district. The concert stage at Cineleasure, the courtyard of Ngee Ann City, and the open plaza of ION Orchard all promote the individuality of their designated malls, but due to their presence outside of the buildings, the events become open and shared. Neighboring shopping centers feed off of and interact with the outside activity, expanding the sense of community beyond the envelope of the single mall. Orchard Road itself, a bustling 8 lane one-way street that bisects the district as its main artery, is often shut down to provide an open, public space for events. On Singapore's National Day, the street hosts a swing dance party; for New Year's Eve, the entire road is flooded with residents counting down to midnight. Recently, the Orchard Road Business Association has introduced a Formula One race within the inner city of Singapore, allowing customers within the malls to witness the show on the streets. In conjunction with the architectural exuberance that flanks the sides of Orchard Road, the street itself is highly decorated and is often lit up for holidays such as Hari Raya, Deepavali, Christmas, and Chinese New Year (all of which, due to their proximity of dates, have the decorations evolve into the following holiday).

The forming of a unified body of shopping centers is incredibly successful in not only bolstering the success of the individual malls, but in creating a unique public realm for the people of Singapore. With the public square holding no traditional ties and the dense urban environment demanding verticality, Singaporeans embrace the shopping-center-city as more than just a place to shop. It is a place for family outings, dates, friendly entertainment, nightlife, and community events. With its roots as a trading depot, Singapore is not unfamiliar with placing importance on a culture of shopping. For generations the ethnic enclaves of the old colonial past have been unified shopping districts themselves: Chinatown, Little India, Bugis. But it is at Orchard Road where we see this district mature into an extreme version of itself. The forming of public spaces, branding for specific clientele, densifying into clusters of shops, and eye-catching architectural prowess have proved to be successful methods that are now spreading beyond the downtown sector of Orchard Road. Recently constructed, Vivo City is Singapore's largest mall and is built in the suburban residential area of the city. However, designed by Toto Ito, Vivo City is a grandiose, intricately designed intended for non-downtown shoppers with a larger quantity of lower prices retail stores and by providing built in playgrounds and outside walkways for the nearby residents. As these methods are contagiously being copied throughout the city, it would come as no surprise if this once trade port will soon evolve into a single, cohesive shopping-center urbanism.