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Designer: Ashleigh Stephens
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A gigantic golden chasm welcomes visitors to this shopping centre in Malmö by Swedish architects Wingårdhs (+ slideshow).
Located to the south of the city in Hyllie, the Emporia shopping centre is Wingårdhs‘ first realised building from a competition-winning masterplan of proposed housing and office blocks. Once all the buildings have been completed, the “amber entrance” will be the only section of the shopping centre visible from the surrounding new streets.
“The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings,” said the architects.
The curving golden glass stretches across a gridshell structure, which curves up and back to allow daylight to penetrate the entrance courtyard. From here, shoppers are led towards three storeys of retail arranged around a figure-of-eight plan.
Photograph by Perry Nordeng
The roof of the structure accommodates a large park with a faceted landscape made up of lawns, terraces and pavilions.
Photograph by Perry Nordeng
“In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility,” added the architects. “Like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.”
Photograph by Perry Nordeng
Atriums in bold shades of blue, green and red help shoppers to navigate the building, while the adjoining car park can be identified by an assortment of coloured panels.
Emporia is first and foremost an urban planning project in which offices, housing, and retail come together in a mixed-use development along Boulevarden and Stationsgatan in Hyllie, on the south side of Malmö. The main idea of our winning competition entry was to hide inward-looking retail behind a wreath of residential and commercial buildings. The whole shopping complex would thereby eventually become integrated into the fabric of the city.
Photograph by Traian Cimpeanu
It is a huge development, of which only the corner building with the Amber Entrance has yet been completed. This entrance will be the only part of the Emporia shopping centre that remains visible when the development is completely built out. The idea of lining the streets with mixed-use buildings demanded a strong form that could attract visitors from Station Square to come in and shop. A sequence of vaults from a previous competition proposal, along with a memory from the Pantheon, reemerged in a bronze-ochre tone. Double-bent glass encloses the diagonal slit that cuts through the building. Here the weather of the Öresund Strait, its fast-moving clouds chasing glimpses of sun, becomes present and tangible.
The diagonal entrance from Hyllie Station Square leads deep into the block. Inside, retail is organised around a three-storey figure eight. Shops are grouped together around boldly coloured atriums, each with a different theme. On the north side of the complex, a ramp leads into a rainbow-coloured parking garage (for 2500 cars) with direct access to the figure eight. To the east is a surface parking lot (for 500) right outside the supermarket.
The rooftop park is designed as a bit of cultivated nature. Its vegetation (sedum, prairie grass, and trees) and its sun-facing, wind-sheltered patios are accessible from both inside and outside the building. The hills that provide protection from the wind are actually hiding mechanical rooms. In the future the roof will be developed with outdoor dining and a spa facility—like amusement parks, shopping centres need to offer new attractions at regular intervals.
Emporia can expand upward and to the west, but not in any of the other directions. The freestanding residential buildings facing Boulevarden have yet to be built, as do those that will stand atop the podium along Stationsgatan on the south side.
Emporia’s interior challenges established shopping centre conventions. Its bold colours and bent sight lines break with the norm, as do the project’s size and ambition—which have made it possible to do custom designs for everything from ceilings, floors, and storefronts to signage, ropes of hanging plants, furniture, and cast glass door handles.
Our motto has been “no intermediate scale” — because that is the realm of the products on display. Large-scale patterns and intricate details characterise the interior. The terrazzo floor is typical of this approach, with its oversized triangular joint pattern, its gradual shift from white to graphite in seven steps, and its flashing inclusions of coloured mirror glass. The design has been wrought with extraordinary attention to detail, down to the leather-wrapped handrails and the colour of the stitching on the built-in seating.
Emporia also includes a quantity of art seldom seen in a commercial environment. A lighting installation (ninety-nine bollards) by Petteri Nisunen and Tommi Grönlund lifts the Amber Entrance, bronze sculptures by Joep van Lieshout and a glass art piece (4 x 81 m) by Silja Rantanen adorn the Sea Entrance, and a line painting on film at an extremely outsized format (20 x 114 m) by Per Mårtensson clads the façade of the parking garage. On the interior is a series of photos by Signe Maria Andersen.
Architect: Wingårdhs through, Gert Wingårdh, Johan Eklind and Joakim Lyth Interior architect: Wingårdhs through, Helena Toresson Graphic design: Wingårdhs through, Jennie Stolpe Landscape design: Thyréns AB (Anders Dahl, Pamela Sjöstrand) Landscape design (roof park): Wingårdhs, Landskapsgruppen Öresund AB Client: Steen & Ström Sverige AB
While the 751 D.Park (D is for Design) abides by the tried-and-true quasi-industrial gallery crawl and Caochangdi is a purpose-built artist village, Dashilar is arguably the heart and soul of Beijing Design Week, and this year’s program sees the launch of an exciting new initiative to examine the future of the neighborhood, which is historically significent to the extent that it simply has not been demolished or developed. I won’t pretend to know enough about the Chinese real estate boom to speak to the broader sociopolitical context of what Dashilar represents as a swath of Old Beijing, adjacent to the recklessly reinvented Qianmen area—itself a part of Tiananmen Square—but as a pocket (in shape and relative size) of an ever-expanding city, the largely residential neighborhood has become a case study for an emergent hybrid of preservation and modernization.
Which is a long way of saying that this year’s exhibitors include a series of architectural proposals alongside the local makers, plus an infusion of Dutch design, courtesy of guest city Amsterdam—each contingent represented roughly equally amongst the 40+ total exhibitors. True to the spirit of Old Beijing, the topography of the streets resembles a maze drawn by a child, and Kenya Hara’s quasi-3D depiction looks something like a cross between the architectural version of “Where’s Waldo” and some kind of biological scan.
The Bloated Shelf by Damien Gernay comprises an ash wood frame and four shelves made from sheets of leather filled with expanded foam. One side of the leather is glued to a wooden board to create the flat surface.
“The idea originates from the image of a prominent belly, constrained by a belt,” said Gernay. “The leather inflates in a natural way, making each piece unique,” he added.
The unit stands at 175 centimetres tall and is 85 centimetres wide.
The shelf forms part of the designer’s range of furniture using leather and foam, which includes a stool with a black leather seat. Gernay said the collection intends to “create a dialogue between a rigid structure and a flexible skin.”
The Bloated Shelf and Bloated Stool are on display at the Cabinets of Curiosity exhibition at Mint shop, 2 North Terrace, Alexander Square, London, SW3 2BA until 30 September 2013.
“I have a bit of an obsession with stationery. I am almost fanatical about choice of paper, notebook, writing implements. It’s getting out of hand. You’re always searching for the perfect writing implement and I think I’ve finally found it. It’s the rOtring Tikky Graphic, a German pen. I buy these by the dozen because I am afraid they might stop making them. It’s for me the perfect writing implement.”
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