MALL wonders

In 1999, India got its first shopping mall, Crossroads, Mumbai and since then, a rash of “container buildings” has sprouted across cities. Says Mohit Gujral, head of Design Plus, “Malls came to India at a time when the real estate industry was going through a major phase of recession. Developers rushed in to grab spaces that would help them sell. The outcome was these arbitrary retail spaces called malls.” Agrees Sidharth Bhardwaj, director, Morphogenesis Architecture Studio. “The international format was imported in a hurry but was not customised to suit the requirements of Indian customers.”

So out went the spirit of the bustling bazaar. Instead you had sky-kissing towers that peddled size and steel as modernity, that offered little space for a community to get together. “What makes these structures uninteresting is the inadequate architectural vocabulary, limited to glass and aluminium. These huge chunks take away a lot from their surroundings by increasing both vehicular and human traffic,” says a member of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission. Malls are, for the most, spaces that do not promote a sense of community (an exception would be City Centre, Kolkata).

But industry experts discern a change in “the second phase of the mall boom”. As our selection of malls show, drawing boards are looking to the past and to the Indian experience to create the new structures. “Now developers are considering aesthetics and working towards models, which can be pitched as complete family destinations,” says Goel. A small tribe of architects and developers is pushing for a new language in mall design—one that shuns the grandiose for the inclusive. As Bhardwaj puts it, “It’s time we bid adieu to grand structures and consider something more spread out, say a cluster of buildings that are environment-friendly.”

History might have a lesson for us. The original mall-maker, Victor Gruen, Austria-born American architect of the first shopping mall in America, disliked shopping. Instead, he wanted the mall to be a space that promotes a sense of community.

SHIPRA MALL, GHAZIABAD
Design: Jaiswal and Associates
When real estate biggies transformed Gurgaon from a sleepy village to glazed mall city, a classy beauty quietly came up on the barren landscape of Indirapuram. Shipra Mall was everything that Delhi’s malls were not—it didn’t vaunt into the sky but sprawled in stately languor, it wasn’t all shining steel and aluminium but a warm white. With a Roman Gothic façade, an impressive colonnade and neat arches, this was a building with character. Says Rameshwar Jaiswal, proprietor of Jaiswal and Associates, the principal architect of Shipra Estates, “In and around Delhi you will find commercial spaces that clearly indicate immaturity of concept and material. But when the Shipra Mall project came to us, we laid out the blueprint of a mall that would have soul.”

The 4.5 lakh sq-ft mall has 140 shops, half-a-dozen eateries, a food court, a multiplex and parking space for over 1000 cars. A walk through its corridors and twin atriums is a soothing experience. “We get a footfall of around 29,000 on weekdays and weekends goes up to 54,000,’’ says an official.
The mall, which came up in 2005, is an environment-friendly structure. The walls of the structure reduces heat load by 20 per cent, says Jaiswal.
— meher fatma

CITY CENTRE, KOLKATA
Design: Charles Correa
A fallow stretch of land is where it came up. But up isn’t the right word. For Kolkata’s City Centre is a horizontal format mall, spread over six acres. It is regarded as a masterpiece in design in architectural circles in the city and across India.
Even before the Charles Correa-designed City Centre came up at the upscale and sprawling Salt Lake suburb in 2004, its design borrowed generously from two Indian experiences—the bazaar life and the need for social interaction there. It is the kind of animated discussions, over cups of tea and spare time, and with people known or just introduced, which Kolkata endearingly refers to as adda.

The result has been a mall that through its horizontal layout, neat straight lines, pastel shades and airy ambience, has come to be seen more as a destination mall than a convenience mall. And in its “seamless connection” with the streets surrounding the mall, City Centre has managed to draw people who often avoid entering malls because of their prohibitively expensive airs. “We actually knocked down the boundary walls to make City Centre a more inclusive place, which would not keep out the common man,” says promoter Harshavardhan Neotia of Bengal Ambuja.

Over the three years it has been around, City Centre, according to Neotia, has seen a weekday footfall of 15-20,000 people, which goes up to 30-40,000 people on weekends. With a 1100 seater multiplex acting as one of the biggest draws, City Centre has around 250-odd establishments, catering to a vast array of consumer needs. To keep up with the bazaar look, it has as many as 14 entry and exit points, and the passages between buildings, are not air-conditioned. “It was tough explaining to the retailers at first, and some thought we were avoiding air-conditioning as a cost saving measure. But we knew it would have killed the concept,” says Neotia.

Today, City Centre, according to well-known architect and urban planner Partha Ranjan Das, is a whiff of fresh air in Kolkata’s urbanscape. “There is nothing ornate about the design, it does not use a lot of expensive material, has made aesthetic use of colours and has enough room for people to move around. City Centre has opened eyes in Kolkata. Finally even simple things stand a chance,” says Das.
— shamik bag

CITI CENTRE, CHENNAI
Design: K. Shivshanker
In a cityscape bristling with loud commercial buildings, the Chennai Citi Centre is as fresh as the sea breeze that caresses this city. This quiet, uncluttered six-storied building in white has a French look with classic tall arches and pilasters—a far cry from the brassy Spencer’s mall. Promoted by the Dubai-based ETA Group, it came up near the sea on Radhakrishnan Salai. Sprawled over four lakh square feet, its design was originally conceived by a French architect. But Chennai-based Eskay

Design’s chief architect, K Shivshanker, made several modifications and when it was finally thrown open on March 3, 2006, he had created a thing of beauty. Says Babitha Jaheez, architect with Eskay Design, who was associated with the Rs 100 crore project from 2003-end when the construction began, “Initially, a French theme was proposed for the façade. But we made some modifications.

Inside, we tried a street concept, with cobbled stones and a rugged finish. Each shop has a different façade, with different colour scheme and treatment. We used Traventine marbled floor to get the street feel.’’ Walk inside and you get the impression that you are walking along a street lined with shops. The huge courtyard on the ground floor creates an impression of space as well as of a bustling square. A rooftop restaurant (with a banquet hall) looks over the city and the picturesque Marina beach further away. According to mall manager Derek Michael, the mall gets a footfall of 4,000 to 5,000 on weekdays and 13,000 to 14,000 on weekends.
— jaya menon

ATRIA MALL, MUMBAI
Design: Hafeez Contractor
Sassy and good-looking, Worli’s Atria, The Millenium Mall, is a towering five-level shopping complex that reflects contemporary tastes and aspirations. Built in granite, marble and glass, it’s a little more than a year old. This mall is owned by Champalal Vardhan, Bhupesh Jain and Dalichand Saha and has been designed by well-acclaimed architect Hafeez Contractor. A sixty-feet high entrance leads into the skylight-filled central atrium, which has glass facades around. The mall’s unique feature is the 60-feet high facade, which is made of doubly curved glass and suspended by cables. This kind of glass is very rarely used and can only be seen in a few places around the world. According to Contractor, “The idea behind using the doubly curved glass was to give maximum visibility from the road and the best view.”

Built on a plot area of 2,00,000 sq. feet, this 50,000 sq. feet mall also has a food court, an entertainment zone complete with gaming consoles, pool tables, bowling alleys, the first 4d theatre and will shortly house a discotheque and two screen theatres too. Apart from the major brands, another highlight is the Rolls Royce showroom. Said to be quite popular especially with the high-end clientele, Atria’s weekly footfall is around 12-15,000 on weekdays and 15,000-20,000 on weekends. There is ample parking space as there is a two-level basement for cars.
—priya paitandi