Shopping Centre Architecture

Dundrum T.C. and Ballymun look set to stand out.

Douglas is a crime against humanity.

any pics of the prososal for stillorgan? i’ve seen a brochure on it but it never occured to me to scan it.

@lexington wrote:

It is only correct that we become ever more demanding on the aesthetical qualities of these giant structures.

I prefer the older Stillorgan centre to the likes of Blanch and Quarryvale. Albeit surrounded by acres of surface parking, at least Stillorgan is a rough facsimile of real shopping streets in a town. You can stroll around in the sun on a good day or shelter beneath the covered walkways if it rains. The newer places seem like giant boxes with huge high white windowless corridors horribly lit. The musak echoes around the miserable shoppers. I won’t go these places when I can shop in town or in Dunlaoghaire or stillorgan and breathe fresh air.

“Dundrum Town Centre” What a scam! There’s already a town centre with some pretty buildings and beside it a grey slum shopping centre. So they build a new SC up the road in the new windowless prison style and call it Dundrum Town Centre – a desperate attempt to endow a soulless box of chainstores shops with a sense of place.

Of course private opwnership is the key difference between a shopping centre and a real shopping district. If you’re too old, too young or too poor to look like a customer, the management can kick you out.

Has anyone considered making residential floors over shopping centres? It might humanise them.

what’s the plan for the old dundrum shopping centre?

I heard some vague details about the plan for the old dundrum sc about a year ago. The old centre was to be pulled down and replaced with more shops, department stores, offices, a hotel, a small number of apartments and what was described as a “covered civic square”. A pedestrian walkway linked the development to the new dundrum town centre. I never saw any renderings or detailed plans though. Last i heard the hotel had been dropped from the proposal.

A mate of mine in Benoy’s in England worked on Newbridge – there’s some great CGI’s at http://www.henryjlyons.com. Retail section. there’s also some good images of Ballymun

see post below

@KarenS wrote:

Has anyone considered making residential floors over shopping centres? It might humanise them.

The Whitewater Shopping Centre Development in Newbridge includes 84 apartments along with a 6 screen Cineplex, commercial office space, in addition to the 50 or so retail units, although I think the developers at one stage wanted to omitt the 6 screen Cineplex element of the project, and replace it with office space but the Planning Authority took a different view on that matter.

Architects for the project are Henry J. Lyons & Partners.

burge_eye looks like you got in while I was preparing the post on that one.
I understand that there was some complex fire engineering solutions employed in the design of that project which greately reduced the cost of construction.

I prefer the older Stillorgan centre to the likes of Blanch and Quarryvale.

Just as a way, to support that form of argument, I would like to add I definitely think, there is a need to support diversity, in the range of solutions available to shopping centre development consortiums, rather than carrying the same solution around with them underneath their arms,… which results in a kind of biosphere culture creation all over the globe. There may be critics of the old Stillorgan shopping centre design, the open air walk routes, and some valid criticism too perhaps, but at least, it isn’t just yet another re-hashing of bio-spherism models. Which was all that basically got thrown together by DMOD there recently, and would be a step backwards for that site, rather than one in the forward direction.

Took this nice piece of writing from a book today, about the world’s largest shopping centre in Minnesota in the United States, same place where Fargo the movie was set, snowed in, for eight months of the year, so people literally exist inside these biospheres for that 8 months. 🙁

During my first trip to the Mall of America, I didn’t even make it halfway around the mall’s perimeter. My legs got tired and I had to stop. I remember sitting at a table in a food court, eating a Dagwood and wondering if I would be able to muster the energy to make it back to my car. As I languished in the food court, I absentmindedly watched a regiment of mothers patrol the walkways with their strollers. It was a Monday, and the soccer moms were out in numbers: youthful, pretty mothers, glowing with vitality and wheeling around their offspring to the cadence of some imaginary drill instructor.

There were so many stores. As in any large biosphere, specialisation was a necessity. There even one store that just carried magnets. All they sold were these little refrigerator magnets, thousands of them, stuck to the store’s walls. As I passed by, I saw that the cashier was reading a Stephen King paperback and looked bored out of her mind. She was like an inmate at Alcatraz, doing hard time and trying her best to burn away the hours of tedium.

The underlying theme here I think is basic human greed, the same for thousands of years really, and the Architects have their fair share of blame here too I suspect. One basic question to ask would be how much energy is guzzled up by these brand new biospherical public buildings? The single biggest sector of energy usage in Europe is, you’ve guessed it: buildings. Running 160 million buildings in Western Europe alone, uses over 40% of Europes total energy consumption. 40% plus of carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings. Only 31% CO2 currently comes from transport! But then again, a commision to build a shopping centre extension, can keep a small Arch practice ticking over for 12 months plus. That is good money in anyones’ language.

The current plan is to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in Western Europe by as much as 45 million tonnes by 2010. This is where the current situation gets a little bit tricky for planting those nice shiny new Biospherical developments everywhere IMHO. Unless you totally want to stick your head in the sand, and completely ignore the energy conservation brief. In Europe, as part of the goal to reduce CO2 emissions, all new Buildings over 1000m2 buildings will need to state their energy saving criteria, as part of their conceptual design. I can only presume this is why Bolton Street/UCD/Queens now have their Architectural students drawing trendy little green and red ‘air-flow’ arrows all over the place. 🙂 Is it a sign I am old when I get nostalgic for the old days, when a drawing a few fire escape route arrows was considered cutting edge?

Even though, Residential Buildings still manage to go through a whopping 2/3’s of the energy consumption from that 40% total buildings now use. The service industry’s growth in Europe, means, that things like Biospheres are catching up rapidly. As the Commercial sector is growing, it just demands more and more energy, fact. Compared to older and currently more unpopular models, like the old shopping centre in Stillorgan and similar examples scattered around Ireland, including the humble ‘main street’ of many Irish towns and villages. Okay, so you couldn’t get away with a tank top and hipsters in the month of January, as you sift through the half price runners box, with some gentle hip R&B music playing in the background.

In Britain alone, the energy guzzling demands of the service industry jump by no less than 3.7% each year, which represents a greater growth in energy consumption than that of all transport! Are we all suddenly getting the picture? Still feeling sanctimonious in your new 4×4 which has that spanking new catalytic converter technology built in? Presently the Architectural profession is simply not prepared to do their duty, to highlight this important facet in the design of any typical biosphere. Sorry, but no amount of friendy looking ‘air flow’ arrows and diagrams, is going to convince me otherwise. In an era, when we are meant to be so concerned about our environment, then why have we all so suddenly decided building more and more retail infernos, is the best way to go? Why has there not been any serious discussion in any major Irish architectural press about this?

With all respect,
Brian O’ Hanlon.

Hi
I am not irish and I am not an architect .
I am italian and I am a lawyer.
But I moved to London 1 year ago and since that date I’ve been working as property administartor for a big worldwide retail company and I got interested in architect and interior retail design.
Our store in Dundrum Town Centre is due to open the next 3rd March together with all the other retailers.
It was a rush and I really hope it will be a success as I worked so hard to get everything ready by that date.
To be honest I think that Town entre will be a success; plans are great and the structure looks modern and funcional.
And if I am not wrong this will be something different from The Jervis Centre, Roches Stores and S. Stephen Green.
Our next oepening will be at Mahon Point, Cork, and I can’t wait to get on site in the next few days and suervey the site.
I’ll survey Dundrum site 2 days before it opens to check the works in our unit and make sure that everything is ok.
And it will be also my first time in Dublin…..very excited!!
Regards
Lya

Hi,
I am not an architect, I’m a civil engineer. I worked as a student engineer on Dundrum Town centre site last summer. To Lya, I’m sure your store will do great. The place is, in fact, huge, relative to many of Ireland’s other shopping centres, and most people in and around Dundrum are quite enthusiastic about it, they would stop us in the street and ask about it.
The one thing I think developers in this country give little or no consideration to is the effect of the traffic created by these places. I don’t know if anyone knows the Pavilions shopping centre in Swords, North Dublin. Traffic.That’s it. And let’s face it, the southside of the city tends to be one major traffic jam, most of the hours in the day. Dundrum has a by-pass that is very slow most of the day-and that was while construction was taking place. Can we all imagine what it’ll be like, with 3 carpark entrances opening onto it when this place opens?The centre of Dundrum itself has very narrow roads too.
Aside from all this, the centre is quite impressive inside. And I’m pretty sure that I, for one, will probably be out there in the very near future! 🙂

There’s a Dundrum retailer on Joe Duffy at the moment discussing how the same company that built the new shopping centre also owns the old shopping centre and has bought up ‘half the property’ in the village. This retailer claims that all the independent (non-chainstore) shops have been barred from renting property in the town and are all to be evicted form the old shopping centre in the coming month.

It’s incredible the amount of PR being generated about a new mall.

I would love to see a section of every major shopping centre to have an integral section devoted to a farmers market
thus maintaining a real social link between the urban and the rural. And of course providing us with real food!

The article below is a good summary of the American model of Shopping Centre:

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/9onplace_vanderbilt.html

A discussion about Dundrum shoppping center and twon centres is coming up on Today FM (Matt Cooper) today.

Hello,

yesterday I’ve been to Dublin to visit Dundrum Town Centre and to check if the store I worked for was ready to open tomorrow as planned.

I have to say that the structure is really impressive, massive, well studyied and good materials made.

I can understand who says that it seems a little bit out of the town context – despite I don’t see how we could expect anything different from it now…. – but the internal site is one of the best I have ever visited.

The only thing I am concerned about is that the works appear to be very far from being completed and I wonder how it will be able to open tomorrow morning at 10!!

I am glad this is not my case but I found that the fit out of the majority of the stores is very behind as well as the entire centre’s one (the front pavement was not finished even today)

Anyway I am sure that everything will be fine and people will enjoy it.

In end….I really enjoyed Dublin!

Ciao

Lya 🙂

The quality of built structures is of the upmost importance. It inspires us, and hopefully encourages us to engage with people in a civilized manner. There is nothing worse than ‘fear and loathing’ in a shopping centre.

I hope it all went well for everyone today. There are floor plans of the centre doing the rounds on the email, and will be heading there myself for a look soon. I know the engineers were on site all night for the last few weeks, and especially last night to make sure it was ok for opening. Betcha it was bedlam!!But am very interested in seeing the finished product.

Garethace you raised many good points there about the sustainablity of these places. I’ve a suspicion ‘Ecoeye’ a couple of weeks back prompted you to mention them as it discussed this issue quite well. They are mammoth consumers of energy and a great obligation ought to be put on their shoulders to make them as efficient as possible.
I was out in Dundrum today for a nosey around and the heat in the place would knock you for six, it was unbelievable.
The people with me were also collapsing – I had to go outside for a breather such was the heat.

Well as for the place itself, an Archiseek exclusive now – here’s a couple of (dodgy) sneaky pics from inside:

Also, rough comparisons with the exterior:

As for the centre overall – very well designed. The build quality is exceptionally high. The mind boggles at how many quarries of stone have been emptied over its floors – they mostly look very well, perhaps a little vulgar as acres of stone tends to look. If they so much as dare rip the stuff up in ten years time as fashions change, treating it as nothing but a fad, a material that has taken hundreds of millions of years to form, then we might as well give up all hope for humanity 🙂 That stuff should never be touched again.

There isn’t a seat in the place other than cafés which is an absolute disgrace. I passed at least five people or groups of people over the course of an hour sitting on the floor on the malls leaning against shop windows, some eating their lunch – contempt for the public if ever you saw it.

The centre itself integrates quite well with the village – the main body of the place spews out the backside of it, out of sight of the charming main street. As for the traffic……

Take the Luas 🙂

Was out there myself on Friday night, and have to agree the heat was unbelievable.Especially in the main body of the centre, somehow a good few of the shops were a bit cooler-I would have thought it would be the other way around.It was late evening when I was there, and dark outside, and I thought that the main parts of the centre were very dull.I know it’s bright during the day due to the glass atria, but for some reason it seems very dull at night in the main passages of the centre. Maybe it was just my imagination……It also seems as though it was opened in a great rush, could they not have waited the month or 2 more, and opened the cinema and all the other shops aswell, all at once?Odd…

@suzy61 wrote:

Was out there myself on Friday night, and have to agree the heat was unbelievable.Especially in the main body of the centre, somehow a good few of the shops were a bit cooler-I would have thought it would be the other way around.It was late evening when I was there, and dark outside, and I thought that the main parts of the centre were very dull.I know it’s bright during the day due to the glass atria, but for some reason it seems very dull at night in the main passages of the centre. Maybe it was just my imagination……It also seems as though it was opened in a great rush, could they not have waited the month or 2 more, and opened the cinema and all the other shops aswell, all at once?Odd…

Hi All,
Suzy that’s absolutely right.
Almost the 30% of the stores did not open on the 3rd March.
We were able to open the day after but I know there were still loads to do.
So I do not understand the reason of this rush…..odd….
But I have to say REALLY NICE!
Take care
Lya

To give you all some idea, where my comments were actually coming from, I put this much together. I have volunteered my services from time to time, to help out with quite a bit of technological scribbling, so getting to grips with a little bit of Enviro-Techno speak, here at Archiseek, is just a slightly different flavour of this. At a stage in the future, when I have developed a serious point of view, on Environmental Architecture, I may be just prompted to structure something more comprehensive on the topic. But presently, it is more to do with a hobby, than anything else.

System-ness, is a huge topic of debate in technological circles presently, because, who is going to do it? Who is going to drive it? Certainly not the Russians. With the Asian’s at the end of their ‘technological development’ golden era, with Europe in decline in the area of scientific and technological development for decades, and with the United States kind of struggling desperately, agains the cost of doing anything ‘white-collar’ at all, on its soil, I would suspect, that someplace like India while be a superpower in the coming decades. 🙂 Dunno, maybe Kenya or someplace too, if they got their hands on some heavily discounted PCs and some bandwidth. Basically, systems as we know them today are radically different from what they were even 10 years ago. They have become especially complex, and hard to achieve, except for the best, biggest and most well organised corporations – the MicroSofts etc. There is really not all that much competition anymore, at the ‘seriously large and tricky’ end of the project spectrum. The evolution of Project Management in all fields of technological contracting, has meant that projects are ‘defined’ from the outset,.. which has the unfortunate consequence, that very few people, are looking at things from end to end anymore at all. I think, you just need this ‘end-to-end’ perspective, to look at any large inter-dependent system-ness problems, the likes of which are often found in architecture. I like Jeff Bezos’s comment, the founder and still current CEO of Amazon.com, who believes, if you cannot feed a ‘team’ with two pizzas, then that team is too big. Amazon, realised early that it didn’t have any huge single advantage over its competitors, so it decided to distribute lots of ‘small teams’ amongst lots and lots of small projects, to innovate and improve its technologies. Amazon, in turn, licenses a lot of the technology it develops, to other smaller web developers, who would not have the resources to develop as such themselves, but find very clever ways to employ Amazon’s cool features for their own needs. In other words Amazon, Google, Yahoo etc, are getting more and more into the fields of research and development, which is some positive outcome, post dot.com.

What is the point of my tour of global scientific research? Well this,… expect in the future, more and more of the systems embedded in buildings especially, to become part of the Internet in future. Even light bulbs in future, will alert the Electrical contractor, before they blow, and send a schematic telling the technician where exactly in the building to find the bulb that is ‘about’ to blow. In future, you will probably call a programmer instead of a plummer, to fix a leak! 🙂 Bandwidth is in oversupply, storage, computational resources are all way over supplied,… but the punitive information that systems embedded in our buildings, currently send back to base, is like is was back in the middle of the last century. And even much of that punitive amount of information, currently floating around, through the fibers embedded in a building, is discarded by the systems reading that information. I know it may sound a little bit like ‘Minority Report’, but, I am wishing there was more serious review of the designs of these large centers, into how they function from a ‘System-ness’ point of view. Environmental is just an aspect of this larger holistic system-ness view of a large built complex. I did a medium-sized summary of the Dubai Conference Centre here:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3516

Enjoy, garethace.

Was at Dundrum today for the first time. I would go along with most of the concerns aired here so far about the environmental sustainability of Town Centre S.C.s and their fuelling of consumerism, a disposable society, car-dependency/congestion and the extinction of the family-run shop.

But, on a physical level, I was quite impressed with how well the centre integrates with the older part of Dundrum (as was said already). If you arrive by Ballaly LUAS station and go into the shopping centre, go all through it and out the far end (which is actually the front of it), you’ve got that nicely-executed public space with pool, and from there the place seems to run almost effortlessly back into the two-storey grain of the main street.

This is very significant because it must be the first time ever in Ireland that efforts have been made to integrate a large modern shopping centre into an existing town or village structure. It’s vastly more ‘people oriented’ in this respect than anything else of its ilk. Having said that, the Balally end is not so good. The public entrance is quite anonymous and there are layers of car parks. Also, there is no signpost to the Luas station when you come out :confused: – you just have to follow the people – and worse, no name outside the Luas station itself 😮 – what’s the story there??? it’s just hidden down at the side of a road. You would not have a breeze where it was if you didn’t know..

But when you think of all those country town shopping centres just dumped in behind the main street and surrounded in a huge surface car park (like Sligo town, Portarlington, Navan etc. etc….) with no relation to the town structure, what has been done at Dundrum is a giant step forward. And, not to bash the country, the other big Dublin centres are dreadful in this way as well.

Regarding size, it’s not quite as enormous as I had expected. I’d guess that the Blanchardstown Centre is slightly bigger (but Dundrum would have more floor space because it’s on three levels & Blanch is on two).

Sorry I have to take exception to some of the issues raised by Graham

The centre does not integrate itself to the village. It is an internalised structure and is typical of suburban malls everywhere; it is just larger and taller.

The centrepiece (atrium) is very poor with visibility clouded by large white ramps, escalators and balconies.

In general the design is uncoordinated and lacks an appropriate scale to either the car or the person.

Architecturally the centre does integrate with the village – but certainly yes, by their nature such centres are inward looking in their operations. This is usually partially alleviated with stores/services facing out into the surrounding area, but it seems this was not possible at Dundrum given the nature of the site.

I think the public square works quite well, if not perhaps too small – and the glass fronted buildings facing the centre are another reasonabe concession.
The access to the centre from the village and the boardwalky nature of the pool area I think are a bit gimmicky and cluttered, and could be made a more permanent looking in a way that connects better with the area.

In the interior, the way Tesco spans across a whole floor in such an exposed fashion in the atrium is awful, but by and large I thought the malls were well-proportioned and very well finished.
Agreed regarding the general scheme feeling somewhat disjointed though; it doesn’t quite work together – particularly the top floor with that curved mall and glazed roof, it feels like an afterthought.

I just think that most of the major achievements, which both Architects and Town Planners have ‘claimed’ as achivements in their respective fields, have gone very much hand in hand, with the commercial side of the equation – namely the explosion in service-industry related activities, and usually just pure exploitation of the public. This is a very ‘compartmentalised’ way of looking at the environment I think.

Large commerce has been a good client, yes, from the point of view, of building large shining monstrosities, but useless from some points of view. … Big commerce, does what big commerce does,… it is like a jugernaut when it gets into the mode of focusing money on a large project or undertaking – then it has no middle gears unfortunately. I find that an awful lot of the service industry growth and property development, has gone very under-regulated.

Like the Ancient Roman’s would rely on a good day out at the events in the Collusium, with the lions and tigers etc, to boost their mood somewhat… the modern explosion in the service industry does quite the same sort of thing for city inhabitants, it would appear, distracting you from a lot of basic short comings in the system at present, and sticking a fresh tasty bagel in your mouth, telling you to, ‘Just cheer up, and get over yourself’. The Collusium and such examples in the past, may have integrated more into the urban fabric though, and provided lasting urban icons. I am not so sure, that many of the urban designers in Ireland, have gotten their heads fully around the scale of this problem in Ireland yet, especially, if some of the model designs and proposals I have seen, are anything to go by.

So given, that the modern city dweller has been snagged into this inescapable consumer net, and the LUAS, new public spaces and so on, are just more and more sophisticated ways to get you on board the big ‘eat’ and the big ‘spend’. The fact, that so many architects and town planners, have adopted this service industry boom, as evidence of exceptional work done in their fields, is I suppose, a very notable example of their willingness, to use the explosion to generate some good self-centred PR hype – but usually that is all. It still doesn’t convince me, that any Irish Architect has sucessfully managed to even look at this problem, and enlarge the debate to any significant degree – there just seems to be one very sucessfully packaged solution. The client – Commerce is the major player behind all of this. The trouble for me, with the way environmental designers talk about themselves and their creations nowadays,…

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3818

Is really their inability to place things in any social context, that is, Ireland in 2005. They do mention poverty related social problems, which plagued public space in past decades, but everyone seems to be afraid to point any finger, at our recent wealth bubble, and the social issues it has raised too. You have to look at Liffey Board Walk, Wolfe Tone Square, O’Connell Street, Henry Street, Hueston Station, IFSC, Dundrum and everything else, within the context of a city, which has become very much geared up behind a booming service industry sector.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

@garethace wrote:

I just think that most of the major achievements, which both Architects and Town Planners have ‘claimed’ as achivements in their respective fields, have gone very much hand in hand, with the commercial side of the equation – namely the explosion in service-industry related activities, and usually just pure exploitation of the public. This is a very ‘compartmentalised’ way of looking at the environment I think.

Large commerce has been a good client, yes, from the point of view, of building large shining monstrosities, but useless from some points of view. … Big commerce, does what big commerce does,… it is like a jugernaut when it gets into the mode of focusing money on a large project or undertaking – then it has no middle gears unfortunately. I find that an awful lot of the service industry growth and property development, has gone very under-regulated.

Like the Ancient Roman’s would rely on a good day out at the events in the Collusium, with the lions and tigers etc, to boost their mood somewhat… the modern explosion in the service industry does quite the same sort of thing for city inhabitants, it would appear, distracting you from a lot of basic short comings in the system at present, and sticking a fresh tasty bagel in your mouth, telling you to, ‘Just cheer up, and get over yourself’. The Collusium and such examples in the past, may have integrated more into the urban fabric though, and provided lasting urban icons. I am not so sure, that many of the urban designers in Ireland, have gotten their heads fully around the scale of this problem in Ireland yet, especially, if some of the model designs and proposals I have seen, are anything to go by.

Obviously, the modern city dweller has been snagged into this inescapable consumer net, and the LUAS, new public spaces, are just more and more sophisticated ways to get you on board the big ‘eat’ and the big ‘spend’. The fact, that so many architects and town planners, have adopted this service industry boom, as evidence of exceptional work done in their fields, is I suppose, a very notable example of their willingness, to use the explosion to generate some good self-centred PR hype – but usually that is all. Commerce is the major player behind all of this, laughing all the way to the banks. The trouble for me, with the way in which environmental designers talk about themselves and their creations nowadays,…

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3818

Is really their inability to place things in any social context, that is, Ireland in 2005. They do mention poverty related social problems, which plagued public space in past decades, but everyone seems to be afraid to point any finger, at our recent wealth bubble, and the social issues it has raised too. You have to look at Liffey Board Walk, Wolfe Tone Square, O’Connell Street, Henry Street, Hueston Station, IFSC, Dundrum and everything else, within the context of a city, which has become very much geared up behind a booming service industry sector.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

‘Bread and Circus’ architecture/planning?

I listened to a young member of the architectural profession, a number of years back, trying to argue that the Awear store on Grafton Street, could actually become a ‘calming oasis’, amongst the bustling thoroughfare of Grafton Street. I guess alarm bells should have been ringing in my ears back then – but at the time, I thought nothing of it. That was before the country got some fast money. I guess every young designer, is keen to jump on an opportunity to prove their ‘design talent’. Indeed, that young designer could well have been me, if I could get my nice renderings together quick enough for a design review! 🙂

Grafton Street itself, remember is an early example of an unholy marriage between Planning and commercialism in Ireland. Grafton Street, to this day, neatly encapsulates that earnest and well-meant aspiration about the provision of ‘public open space’ being good for all. But for me it also demonstrates, people who pawn a high-margin commodity, like the Flower sellers, command the ability to block the road, so a pedestrian street doesn’t work so pedestrian friendly anymore. Take motor cars out of the equation, and it makes the conjestion even worse! I just love the way, the flower sellers managed to the pick the points, where they could create the maximum amount of pedestrian conjestion!

Lets just cut to the chase here, the modern shopping centre is another extension of the advertising campaign, from the worlds of TV, radio and Cyberspace, coming through into the physical world. The crack between real and virtual worlds has opened so much wider nowadays. The two worlds seem to knit together into one homogenous fabric of existence. Just as more and more chunks of physical world, move into cyberspace, a lot of Cyberspace would appear to be moving back into the physical world. Urban design and architecture, have both emerged with a brand new manifesto – because they offer a large canvas – a new kind of ‘Media Space’ as it were. I am afraid though, the Environmental professional is begining to look like a puppet bouncing up and down on these ever strengthening ‘Cybernetic’ strings. As if you went to shop, for more or less the same reasons, you went into a Church or other kind of sacred space, to make amends with your Creator and quietly complemate your existence? ? ? The message has become very garbled, religion and commerce, professionalism and exploitation,… as often happens, much is lost, in the digital translation. The shopping centre, like any good advertising campaign, tries desperately to bring commercialism, to some kind of higher plane.

Sure, Commerce, as the client, can afford to pay, those trendy polo neck wearing designers, in the ‘Architectural Review’ Magazine, to clad new commercial pleasure boats, with some kind of austerity and ‘calm reflective meaning’. But errrh,… sorry, I am simply not buying your brand, I just prefer the honesty of the Roman solution. Millenia later, we can be honest, and say that the Romans built the Collusium to keep the masses contented – there was absolutely no higher motive behind it – absolutely no ambiguity. It is a sign of the strength of that culture rather than its weakness, that it was able to make such an honest statement, all those many years ago. Shopping centres are trying to look reserved, astute and smart,… like some high powered Calvin Klein branding strategy, to corner a very lucrative demographic,… the austerity, plainess and understatement is carefully aimed to mask the actual intent – to bring in the real dollars.

I wish designers and planners would have a less compartmentalised view of their world. Not to try and operate in a vacuum, and talk about things like Urban space without reference to the world, Ireland and the expanding world of Cyberspace, as they are today, and how they relate with each other.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

It was a nice day last Wednesday when I was at the Dundrum centre. There were good views of the purple-y mountains, there were no tracksuits in the place like there are in every other centre and, as they are saying on boards.ie, “it’s a great place to see totty”.

True, the inside is just like every other shopping centre. But I still maintain it integrates well with older Dundrum. This is quite marked when you come in from the Balally end (the recommended Luas stop for the centre), which is just the usual Irish shopping centre experience of walking across a large tarmac-ed area and going into a hole in the bottom of a huge brick wall (or other shit building)…….so that when you come out the front of the centre, you are (at least I was) pleasantly taken aback at the pubic space – if it seems a little cluttered it’s probably because the old Mill Pond had to be incorporated – connecting into the main street.

The first house on the main street is like a timewarp – two stories with slate roof & sash windows, you can nearly see the sacred heart on the wall in the tiny rooms inside – but there are architects or surveyors in there, fiddling with drawings. It’s an out office for the centre – how sweet.

Since the bypass opened, the main street is a revelation – it’s a street again. It had been choked with traffic all day every day for as long as I can remember.

But so what if the ‘main passages of the centre seem very dull’? The place has a tighter urban feel than Newbridge Shopping Centre. And there’s more to come I believe, outside, in the form of the European “network of streets and spaces” staple, which the others don’t have.

@garethace wrote:

the austerity, plainess and understatement is carefully aimed to mask the actual intent – to bring in the real dollars.

But of course this is the case; this has always been the case – going back to the mid-19th century if not a lot further. Okay the image stakes have been getting higher and higher in recent times, with an accompanying detachment from the outside world, but I suppose key to all of this is how much of it you choose to accept or ignore.
It’s up to the individual whether to support these places or not, or how much of the ‘dream’ you wish to enter into; whether you go the whole way or just stay at the margins looking in at everyone else, or just occassionally ‘indulge’ in the experience.
A lot is made of shopping malls and consumerism and how unhappy we supposedly all are – at the end of the day it’s up to yourself, the individual. Fashion palaces for 15-34 females most certainly do not cater for society as a whole. You have the choice to ignore them.

It’s the resulting reduction in choice outside of these places that is the real concern, rather than the image etc generated by them.

At least the one good thing Dundrum has brought is the pulling of Luas users down the delightful mainstreet – it’s worth the trip just for that 🙂

A lot is made of shopping malls and consumerism and how unhappy we supposedly all are – at the end of the day it’s up to yourself, the individual.

Well, I am afraid, that is just too naive for this time and age,.. producers of merchandise of every sort, pay dearly to get there brands pushed under the consumers noise, so unfortunately, we just end up buying what ever passes our radar,… not necessairly, the best product. See the Amazonia book link below, if you are really interested in this topic.

There is just too things, I would like to add to what I have already said.

Firstly, that when I refer to Architects and Planners, as being compartmentalised in their thinking, I should also qualify that statement – while I looked at the negatives of this, I suppose it is only right to point out, that ‘focus’,… a much more positive word, to describe a similar behaviour, is a good trait, when dealing with problems too.

Unfortunately though, focus was not ever my forte. 😉

Anyhow, the other point is simply this, and it does underline, my own lack of focus a bit too. I think, that books about the Dot.com revolution, really good ones, like Amazonia:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565848705/103-5113124-6063846

Have become required reading, for anyone who considers themselves planners, architects, masterplanners and so forth,… anyone who is concerned about the built environment basically. Because in having to define the virutal world of E-tail,.. these tombs, also go into some depth about the physical world that was retail, before the dot.com era.

Certainly, reading any of these books would manage to ‘mop up’, on some of my meanderings about Cyberspace and cracks existing between different worlds. By Cyberspace too, I refer to TV, Radio, Internet, Text Messages, anything and everything where the world has become virtualised. Even a hole in the wall ATM.

It is just that I found it strange how planners, manage to talk about Banks wanting to get out of O’Connell Street, without, at least mentioning, where some of the impetus for that move away from physical streets and places in they city, initially came from.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

@garethace wrote:

Anyhow, the other point is simply this, and it does underline, my own lack of focus a bit too. I think, that books about the Dot.com revolution, really good ones, like Amazonia:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565848705/103-5113124-6063846

Have become required reading, for anyone who considers themselves planners, architects, masterplanners and so forth,… anyone who is concerned about the built environment basically. Because in having to define the virutal world of E-tail,.. these tombs, also go into some depth about the physical world that was retail, before the dot.com era.

Gareth for the dotcom not to bomb they needed facilities and development patterns like this http://www.iavi.ie/pvaluer/autumn02/PV%20autumn%20Aerotroppdf.pdf

That never happened because the supply chain simply couldn’t provide the level of services efficiently, I don’t know how many times I have found something on the net at half the price it is at home only to see the delivery cost bring the price higher than it would cost at home.

While I laud your civic thinking the palaces of consumerism have a very large captive audience and a lot of people do really enjoy showing off their purchases from their last visit to the palace. I don’t think we should try to stop these projects I simply feel that where they are located is the key. The Jervis Centre was pivitol in turning around the fortunes of the North inner City. Dundrum is essential to the rates base of Dunlaoghaire Rathdown. Liffey Valley is another story

What conclusions are you drawing from these thoughts Brian?

Some Conclusions?

Okay, here is my best shot.

I received this question recently, while discussing the subject of Internet Commerce at another message board. This guy is from Texas, and he was asking me about something called Push. Bear in mind, that coming from Texas he has probably seen it all, in terms of poor Mexicans skipping over the border, and taking up positions in the service industry, similar to the way Dublin has gone only now.

Push is definately here and only getting bigger – the idea debuted before its time – but the age of computers feeding you content based on your preferences/history is already here.

I am curious, in Ireland, do grocery stores require you to shop with a club card to recieve the lowest price on items? Here in the states, if you don’t use your club card at the grocer, you don’t get the sale price on items and sometimes coupons aren’t accepted. This is all so the supermarket can track your purchases, which help them determine what to stock in the store, what to put on sale, and most importantly, it allows them to send you coupons for specific items to “push” you into buying. For example, they might see that you buy a 16oz can of peaches every week. Next thing you know, you are getting coupons for 50 cents off if you buy TWO 16oz cans… By doing this, grocers very effectively pump up their sales.

Barnes and Nobe bookstore has adopted this method over here in the States as well and require a club card to take advantage of the discount price. It is very convenient, since they record your book purchases, they are able to send you notice when new books in your favorite genres are on sale, or when new books you may have interest in are released.

Basically, in Amazon.com, the main front home page of that web site, hasn’t been ‘touched’ by a human hand in years. Because the idea, is to gather information about everyone, so when you visit Amazon, the web page, will display things, that it ‘thinks’ using Artificial Intelligence, are to your liking. There were some funny things initially, like, if you typed the name of a children’s book, you got up a whole load of flick knives, and numerous other examples. But after a while, the programmers manage to iron out this ‘kinks and wrinkles’. So you are not as aware that it is happening anymore – that is really when it begins to do its job. You can catch a glimpse of that in the Minority Report movie, where the ads on the side of the street change whenever you walk past them, ‘targetting’ you so to speak, and tracking your movements around the modern city. This technology is just going to become more pervasive, sophisticated and powerful. Very soon you will not even notice the jagged edges, that give away ‘its digitally altered’ identity, like at the moment.

All you are seeing with large shopping centres, is the physical world trying desperately to stay abreast of all that has suddenly happened in the past 50 years, in terms of the amount of ‘media’ and messaging available to us, constantly, all our waking hours, every day. The large shopping centre, is like the ‘Cinema Theatre’ equivalent of what you normally just consume through the little screen, the radio sound or the computer monitor, newspaper, magazine etc, etc. I do find it strange how suddenly, young kids have become the target of so much carpet bombing marketing/advertisement campaigns. I am just wondering what kind of relationship the future generations will try to build with all of this media – how will we establish an etiquette to it all? LIke the couple of 12 year old kids in UCG cinema in Parnell Street, have these ‘unlimited card’ things, which allow them to get into movies each week for a cheaper price. Yet, what the cinema is doing, is at the ripe old age of 12, the kids likes, needs and so on, are being recorded onto the system – by the time these kids reach 30 or 40, I am sure sophisticated systems will exist to take advantage of all that data.

Terence Riley, gave this talk at xmas in Trinity:

http://www.irish-architecture.com/aai/events/data/1094589443.html

About how Architecture is somehow ‘losing’ market share, in terms of the information it displays… basically, architecture is just fading into the background altogether, and it is all just big signs and Neon. I do think we have duties in this department certainly, real responsibilities, not to be ‘gullible’ about what is actually happening out there. Given these kids are going to grow up in a time, where ‘Push’ operates in so many ways on everyone. Heck, look at the amount of info, contained about you and me on this message board. What I do know, is that most of us are in a real hurry to black-slap one another and make out like its all a ‘great days work’. But our daily environment is starting to get manichured and wired in ways, we cannot even understand right now. I liked the picture of Nixon, and the microphones. It sort of speaks about the early days of Cyberspace and Cyber-Power, when the world was initially starting to get wired, and understand for the first time, without innocence, that it had deeper effects in terms of how we all live today.

And here we have a group of catives of the new information age?

And finally, I have chosen these Robert Capa photographs, and the David Douglas Duncan portrait of Nixon, is basically, because I wish to imply a feeling of the scale and numbers we are dealing with here – because large numbers and statistical analysis, is really what ‘economics’ is to do with, and this in turn affects our environment.

So lets all say ‘Hurray’ for shopping centres. 🙂 Again, courtesy to both Mr. Capa and Mr. Duncan for taking those photographs.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

I suppose the central point of your arguement is that the more choice being offered is in fact a limiting of choice, as we are forced to accept what is on offer, and that the opportunities for others to enter the maket, or for anyone or anything to offer alternatives is diminished, whether it be via these centres, store schemes, advertising/promotions etc.

The question to ask is what is the alternative model? With these shopping centres is it simply a case of going back to the open street model for everything to become nice and wholesome again?
Is it just a case of local traders coming to the fore in these schemes for the world to become a better place?

Many of your points Brian hold a startling ring of truth, and certainly planning policy should always be under constant review, but not everything is bad about these places. As much as it may be a naive thing to say, you can still pick and choose to a lrage degree, we haven’t totally lost our independence – not yet anyway.

There is just one more thing, on the subject of Acoustics and Architecture, I would like to deal with though. This Architect, gave a talk recently at Trinity to the AAI,…

http://www.irish-architecture.com/aai/events/data/1108444687.html

By the way, that is an open air community building you are looking at there in the photographs, I know, an open air community building was a first for me too, but it just goes to show, how far we have to climb, in terms of mind-broadening in this country – what the real possibilities are. Imagine that space, full of busy traders or something on a Saturday morning, and the buzz of their activities seeping out through the openings to the streets outside, and attracting the attentions of random passers-by. I am not sure, if putting everything into a glass dome, and blasting hot air into that dome, for all the ‘shoppers’ to feel pleasantly toasted, is the only answer. But the Irish planners and developers seem to have settled upon that paradigm, for the time being anyhow, and that is what every client is climbing over one another, in such a hurry, to achieve.

The Swiss Architect, in question, talked a lot about ‘pushing to the limit, the technology of the wood’. You have to try to do a Swiss accent, to get that right though. Anyhow, during question time at the end, this Swiss Architect was very forthcoming, in wanting to answer all of our questions and queries. Ger Carthy of Grafton Architects, asked what I believe to be a very good question, about a particular multi-storey school building the Swiss Architect had done in Basle or someplace. The question related to the minimalism of the spaces in the school, the whole multi-storey building being cast basically in one single piece of concrete, and it had exposed concrete all over the place, in its finished state. But Ger asked quite rightly, what effect did this have upon the functional operation of a school? That, with all the exposed concrete material, would there not be a problem with echos etc. The school was full of open plan circulation areas, lightwells, and all sorts of really ‘cool stuff’, that Architects love to deal with. 🙂 Yeah, the school did seem like a ‘calming oasis of knowledge’.

Anyhow, the Architect put special absorbant sound panels, just the minimum required, and they were so minimal, as not to look overbearing, they were integrated with the style of the architecture. The School teachers love the building, have no problems with noise, or echos, and can teach just fine. Now, the problem I find with the Shopping Centre, is that it does something very weird with noise, when a place is full of thousands of busy shoppers, when you most expect to hear the ring of heels clipping off of hard surfaces, like you do in Trinity, or in Stillorgan open walkway streets, or in a semi-pedestrianised shopping area,… in Shopping centres, this very attractive sound of the clipping of heels, or people moving about,… which would also be the attraction of a nice piazza, side walk cafe in any great European city,…. this aspect is simply missing in the shopping centre.

Don’t get me wrong, I know all about ‘the roar’ that Grafton Street can emit, when you are walking up it, full of bustly shoppers, and how terribly uncomfortable that is. But the sound of peoples movements, in a shopping centre, doesn’t really work – or the music in the centre is getting over it. Maybe there is simply too much absorbant materials, or something. But the shopping centre space, really deprives you of that one nice thing, about communal shopping areas – the acoustic dimension. I am thinking of when I was at Helsinki, and the harbour side fish market, in the big square at the centre of that city, where people mingled through the stalls, walking on cobbles and being intoxicated with the many smells, sounds of people selling/buying and enjoying themselves. Interestingly, Michael M., mentioned this aspect about the design of the Liffery Board walk, and compared it with sitting in the folks car, at summertime, driving over the wooden bridge to Bull Island. I can even think of a good example closer to home, that of the St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, where the OPW I think, decided to keep all of the old materials, like old wooden planks and walkways, that creak and move slightly, reverberate, when you traverse across them. I quite like this, and it humanises the place very sucessfully I think.

The National Gallery extension by Benson and Forsyth isn’t bad either, I like the way that sounds merge together and float around through the space is wonderfully exciting and cool ways. When you talk about ‘freedom’, it is really weird, just the kinds of qualities of space, that most of all underline for the participant in the Architecture a sense of freedom, or not. Michael McGarry, spoke too of the limited ‘infrastructure’ associated with some of the most wonderful and memorable public spaces in older European cities,… for the horse race in Sienna, they put down straw so that the horses don’t slip, but that is really the only ‘maintenance’ they get. Open space, has the potential to work this kind of magic, at its best,… I noticed that O’Connell street has begun to change ‘acoustically’ for the better in its lower half too, where the pedestrian margins have been widened, and somehow, the traffic isn’t ‘the only’, thing you hear now on O’ Connell Street. But funny, how the top half of O’Connell Street, still has the deafening ‘roar’ of bus diesel engines and motorbike two-stroke engines whizzing in and out… you stand around the old Carlton and you are still just ‘blown away from that traffic noise.

But for my own money, the Jervis Centre, or any of these modern indoor complexes do not transfer this ‘free’ kind of feel of space, because of reasons like acoustics,… amongst many others. I would understand in a prison, or some awful facility for holding people captive, the designer of an ‘institution’ wanting to communicate a feeling of captivity to the participant, in the architecture,… but I simply don’t understand, why a shopping complex would want to make you feel ‘internalised, and trapped’…. maybe some people find it safe or something, dunno. But then you have that awful contrast, when you finally emerge with your shopping to the multi-storey carpark, and you are back again, in this cold, drafty, lofty, tar-macked, oil-smelling, possibly rat-infested garage entrance,… which is the car parks in the shopping centres. On this subject, I think Carme Pinos, spoke nicely about her approach to designing car parks, for multi-storey office buildings.

But finally, on the subject of cars, and tracking your movements, gathering information etc,… I think, when I opened up the Evening Hearld last night, and saw on the front page, a feature about the Gardai, having a camera on every corner, connected up to a system, which could search your number plate, and find out everything about you in seconds,… well, how long is it, until the eyeballs in everyones’ head are going to get bar-coded too, so that the entire city just becomes like one big prison? I found it interesting, how the traffic engineering department too, who have been responsible for so much anti-social design in cities over the recent decades, how they have been so quick to get to this table, and begin feasting on all of this information, they can gather about people/movements. Of course, the real trick, will be ‘to scan’ each and every car that goes into the shopping centre, and track that frequency against, what they buy, how much they buy, and all kinds of other ‘information’ that exists out there now about people, barely separated systems, by what could only be called ‘Chinesse Walls’,… the physical world we live in nowadays, has increasingly just become a shadow of the virtual one.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

One of the slogans throughout Amazon.com’s growth as a company and worldwide business, was the old faithful,… ‘monetize those eyeballs’,… meaning, that you get people who browse your virtual world, to drop more items per visit into that online shopping cart. Anyhow, I coincidentally, just stumbled across this article at a regular web site of mine today:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22103

About Identity theft, so anyone care to tell me again, why I should fill ‘elated’ about the new opening of a centre like Dundrum etc, near me? ? ? ? I mean, I don’t mind getting familiar with my local Deli counter staff or whatever, but some of this ‘voucher scheme’ rubbish is just getting ridiculous these days, and in my opinion is also illegal. I just wonder how many clip-board holders were flying around on that opening day at Dundrum? 🙂

See ya!

Brian O’ Hanlon.

This article from last weeks Sunday Times discusses some of the consequences of shopping centres on freedom of speech:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2766-1542947,00.html

Garethace,

Bear in mind that in order to raise venture capital, entrepreneurs sell the most commercially optimistic possibilities of every technology. 95% of the time these visions fail to materialise. When you want to sell a vision, it helps to have a good story, a credible, fascinating narrative – something a journalist can re-use to entertain his readers. As a result, the media is full of overblown technological prophesies that we later look back on with shame and amusement.

Shops have collected vast quantities of point-of-sale data for decades and have mostly obtained little value from it. I can’t see any difference between modern loyalty card schemes and green shield stamps.

Architecture is losing market share to information systems. You buy from Amazon, so there’s less money to pay an architect to do a new Waterstones. But there is also competition from edge-cities. Lots of buildings that are obviously devoid of architectural input line the M50. This type of retailing cares less about architecture than a city centre flagship store like Arnotts or Selfridges- but this doesn’t matter because these boxes have very short lifespans. Every time I drive past Dunnes in Cornelscourt it seems to have another plastic makeover. I’m glad it’s so ugly because nobody will miss it when it’s gone

garethace, im glad to read your comments on energy and greed, embodied in the rush for large shopping centres such as dundrum town centre. i thought for a while there that nobody in ireland was ever going to pop their heads above the parapet and make the link between broader societal and economy sustaining issues and the solutions we are building in response to meet the ever increasing demands of economic growth. i shudder to think what will happen when emerging economies start adopting the same trends and solutions…

we can only hope that ultimately market forces will, at the very least, drive building solutions towards using more energy efficient technologies to maintain the internal environments they enclose, never mind a reflective aesthetic…the upcoming energy performance in buildings directive and ever increasing understanding and concern over the implications the built environment has on larger and broader scale issues (e.g. climate change and energy security) will likely have an impact within the next 10 years – just in time for the retrofitting of many environmental conditioning systems. to note: in terms of energy security, Ireland is one of the countries in the ‘developed’ world most at risk – due to our fuel infrastructure and reliance on imported fuel.

i agree these issues, in the context of shopping centres, need some airing in the industry press – the boys at construct ireland may even have covered it already?

sustainable ( a term which may become overtaken in coming years) design solutions do not limit architectural expression but do require synthesis of a broader and deeper range of issues than current convention and design processes allow….dealing with such complexity in design development costs money – is there a way around this?

at least with the experience being gained by western architects in creating enclosed spaces that maximise exclusion of the natural environment, will help us all when we start building on mars! 🙂

Trying to understand, all of these things, on so many different scales is challenging I will admit,… ten years ago, I simply could not have gotten my head around it very well,… that is the trouble, when you are a mere student stumbling across the odd architectural journal with articles about Edge City etc. So lets just carry on the same vein as the rest of my posting here, and deal with Edge City as a concept.

I happened to find this piece today, which uses the metaphor of containerisation in the physical world, to explain packets of data, the little bits of information, that are the nuts and bolts of how the Internet works. It is a rather nice piece of writing I think, and manages to draw together two separate ideas from the virtual and physical worlds. The other important thing to know about how the Internet works, is that the Internet, ‘is a network of networks’,… rather than a top-down imposed uniform system. Noone actually maintains the whole system, it is just a whole bunch of different, independent systems, which are virtually simulated into a seamless whole,… through the use of packets, which are like the standardised containers, and also things called routers, (think products from Cisco Systems etc) which are like the cranes that do all the heavy lifting at ports and railway stations.

The TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) idea was the electronic equivalent of the containerisation revolution which transformed the transport of international freight. The basic idea in the freight case was agreement on a standard size of container which would fit ships’ holds, articulated trucks and rail wagons. Almost anything could be shipped inside a container, and special cranes and handling equipment were created for transferring containers from one transport mode to another. In this analogy, the transport modes (sea, road, rail) correspond to different computer networks; the containers correspond to the TCP envelopes; and the dockside and trackside cranes correspond to the Cert-Kahn (Inventors of TCP) gateways (routers). And just as the crane doesn’t care what’s inside a container, the computer gateway (router) is unconcerned about the contents of the envelope. Its responsibility is to transfer it safely on the next leg of its journey through Cyberspace.

Simple though it is, the Cerf-Kahn idea of a gateway (router) linking different types of network was the key both to the subsequent growth of the Internet and to the explosion in creativity which it fostered. Its emphasis on ‘end-to-end’ reliability meant that the network would essentially be indifferent to what it was used for. The gateways (routers) had only one task – that of getting packets from one place to another. They cared nothing for what those packets represented. As far as the network was concerned, a packet containing a fragment of a love letter was the same as one containing a corner of a pornographic photograph or a segment of a digitised telephone conversation.

So you can understand what I mean, when I say the crack between the virtual world and the physical world is getting wider all of the time,… as more and more of Cyberspace, jumps into the physical world, and becomes ‘Edge City’, a world of standardised containers and articulated lorry transport, railway hubs and ports which are large containerised warehouses. Modern technical journalism and everyday press has focussed on the notion, of everything ‘moving onto the Internet’,… moving into Cyberspace,… but the reverse is also just as true. The movement of Cyberspace back down into the physical environment, simpy hasn’t got the same press, except for a few vague architectural notions, like that of Edge City, which tries rather desperately to grapple with a huge issue now facing the urban environment.

By the way, most of the companies we know nowadays, with any established success in doing business through the Internet – the Dell Computers, the Amazons, the Fed-Ex Parcel Delivery Service, Walmart Supermarkets in the US – all of those have foremost come to realise the opportunities now afforded, by use of containerisation, transportation, and that whole physical/virtual reality which is Edge City. I think one of the funny, or not so funny examples, James Marcus cited in his book Amazonia, was while helping out in the Christmas rush in the Amazon.com warehouse in Seattle, how he would roll a trolley around a huge warehouse somewhere on the outskirts of that city, collecting the orders that customers placed through the Internet. Remember this was Christmas time, and one order he put together for a customer included a company of ‘Mein Kamp’ by Adolf Hitler. Now, I think that probably underlines what was said above, about the packets/containers not even caring what was inside. 🙂

Brian O’ Hanlon.

P.S. This kind of report, will probably make more sense to the PlayStation Generation Forum Members, but I will post it anyhow:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/23/extended_outages_for_world_of_warcraft.html

Sometimes in Architectural exhibitions, you come across these silly futuristic presentations, called ‘paper architecture’,… but I think the usefulness of these presentations, is they very often time capsule a notion or anticipation of something, just before something happens, or something is unleashed upon the world. Can anyone think of similar examples of this?

I remember one, in the joint Scottish/Irish ‘Young Irish Architects’ exhibition from a decade ago roughly, which contained something by a Mr. Kevin/Jonathan Woods,… sorry, may even have that name wrong,… but I also remember sitting down listening to the fellow deliver a 5-10 minute discussion about this notion of webspace, and the city. He was thinking about how, cyberspace, could be navigated like the physical world, where you would see similarly kind of urban forms etc.

Anyhow, it only just occured to me, how prophetic that presentation actually was,… I wouldn’t mind actually catching a glimpse of the A1 original again sometime. I mean, is there some sense, in maybe re-exhibiting some things like this, as part of Irish Architectural exhibitions? At the time, I say, this particular presentation, I had absolutely no clue as to what the guy was trying to fix in upon. So I just left it there.

I think, the particular scenario, the Architect in question envisaged a decade ago, has sort of materialised. But with a twist, I think – there is this thing called irony, that sometimes comes into play awfully in real life. I considered, how the environment in Ireland these days, has become like the following: The car roughly equates, in modern webspace jargon, to the ‘browser’. The car has been embedding into everyday life, similar to how the monopolistic Microsoft Corporation, managed to embed their browser, into their operating system product. Whereas the road infrastructure basically equates to the search engine, where you type in something randomly and look for a suggestion. The modern Shopping centre, in the context of both the car and the road infrastructure, is like the ‘Home Page’ you find, when you click on one of the links you find through your search engine.

The home page, is really the prime real estate, because that is where the eyeballs are all monetized, to use the Amazon.com e-business jargon. 🙂 It is funny, how these mad-cap architectural paper presentations, with musings and philosophical ideas, sometimes turn out to be so close to what you end up with in the reality.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

@garethace wrote:

there is this thing called irony

Indeed there is.

Speaking of irony there was a brilliantly ironic piece by Sheila Flannigan in the Business Section of Todays times about her experiences in Dundrum. Her conclusions were not dissimilar to yours Brian, albiet in a shorter format. Worth tracking down.

Will do that, thanx.

Just put a quick link here so I can find it again:

http://www.ireland.com/cgi-bin/dialogserver?CMD=&SAVEDB=newspaper&SAVEORGANISE_CODED=R:date0&SAVETHRESHOLD=90&SAVESTARTDATE0=01/04/2005&SAVEENDDATE0=01/04/2005&SAVEQUERY00=&TOPDOC=130

I have noticed, however, that noone has picked up on the obvious Kevin Lynch, Image of a City,…

Kinds of parallels, I have been exploring here, with my ideas about webspace and edge city, and shopping centre architecture. The notion, that people draw out a picture of the city in their brains, and that defines how people use the city. One of the most common, although, dis-inter-mediated techniques of navigation these days,… is the rocket-fuelled, ‘Smart’ broadband way, of the world wide web.

I cannot decide honestly, if the people themselves expect cities to replicate that kind of navigational experience, or if planners lay it out that way,… but it is a curious question indeed.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

nice quote on Shopping Centers in an article I read yesterday

“faux public places designed to attract rich people and make them feel comfortable”

The Mall Goes Undercover
It now looks like a city street.

Thanks for that Lotts. Probably the best writing on shopping centres is ‘Variations on a Theme Park : The New American City and the End of Public Space’ by Michael Sorkin. It was written in 1992. Many of these articles that appear in newspapers etc seem to be just a repeat of the main points made by Sorkin et al.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374523142/qid=1112881090/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/103-7181276-4383850?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

That TV series, on Sky at the present, called ’24’ is something I became pretty addicted to lately. It is full of SUVs, shopping malls, public spaces, guys with ear-pieces running around looking at sophisticated palm pilots and surveillance systems, linking via satellite and all sorts. It is a really cool show, I want to buy the DVD collection at some stage…. but in Lott’s linked article I simply could not pass out the description of the ‘lifestyle centre’ reinvention of the shopping centre concept, and the link with this TV series called ’24’, …. so ‘post 9/11’,… preserving the freedoms of this great nation sort of angle. It is really funny, how lifestyle centres and SUVs nowadays, seems to equate to the American-ised perception of ‘freedom’ in some way,… while I have gone to considerable lengths in my posting here, to look carefully at that supposed conception of ‘consumerised, free Nirvana’. Anyhow I still think Jack Bauer is cool, anymore votes?

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/scrapbook/22/Sbk/22/60860_1_6.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0285331

I mean, wouldn’t anyone feel safer with that fellow looking over and protecting us all? Using the latest sat-Nav and best SUVs that money can possibly afford? “CTU agent Jack Bauer has to race the clock to handle both a presidential candidate assassination plot and his daughter’s kidnapping, while dealing with a mole inside the agency”. Also from the article Lotts linked:

Ever since Victor Gruen constructed the first indoor shopping center in a Minneapolis suburb in 1956, the mall has been supersizing itself.

BTW, my quote about shopping centres, earlier on in this thread was about ‘The Mall of America’ in Minnesota, think the movie Fargo, a place where it is cold for most of the year, so shopping centres made a lot of sense, but then they became gigantic in scale. Minnesota also happens to be one of the biggest centres of computer technology and software companies in the country – I guess there is nothing else to do it is so cold. I dunno, you go to a city like Helsinki which is pretty cold too, is a contender to become another Silicon Valley like centre of innovation and technology, and yet they still manage to have city streets, and nice open public spaces, granted all public buildings there, which there are plenty provide massive ‘cloak rooms’ for coats you will need to wear.

I hate to do this, on a public forum, and I know providing this link here, might be a little bit on the inappropriate side, . . . . but I think, we need to be aware and educate ourselves, carrying on the theme of a TV series like ’24’, and Jack Bauer etc, maybe the world post 9/11 is indeed a different place. I think the link below should dispel most any doubts left, about whether ‘technology’ is being used to push consumer products of all kinds, upon the modern society.

http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/isn/2002-q3/0004.html

Even personnel at the bottom of the cartel food chain have Israeli night-vision goggles, ICOM radio frequency scanners, and Magellan GPS handhelds.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Drat,
tidy up going on here, opps. 🙂

Put everythign into one post above.

Couldn’t resist including this particular paragraph, from a book by Frank Partnoy, called ‘Infectious Greed’, which described (or tries at least, since its workings are still mysterious) the workings of Salomon’s famed Arbitrage Group of mathematical PhDs,… who would use financial computer models to suggest volatile bonds, to buy, where you could make a profit. I think this is probably where a lot of the consumer oriented ‘Push’ strategies originated from in the 1980s. Except nowadays you are trying to understand, how large a position you want to buy in orange juice, or nappies, or toilet roles or something. 🙂

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Not surprisingly, traders who were consistently designing transactions to avoid legal rules – and who were paid millions of dollars for doing so – developed a culture of supremacy and disdain. Mozer and other traders began to disparage other firms in the same way salesmen from Bankers Trust had derided their clients. Salomon’s customers were important to the Arbitrage Group, because they provided precious information about supply and demand that traders needed to spot inefficiencies. But many of Meriwether’s traders began to take that information for granted, and to view their customers as fools. Paul Mozer was said to “turn on the charm on sales calls. But then he’d turn around and say something about what a moron the person was.”

Nice New York Times piece here:
http://econ.gsia.cmu.edu/Freshman_Seminar/scholes.htm

I agree with a lot of this, there is little in this from an architectural point of view and it does work from the same principles as any other existing shopping centre and in that regard there is little new on offer.

What Dundrum has going for it are three very positive things firstly there was little else in terms of modern shopping between Liffey Valley and the combination of both Bloomfields, Dunlaoire S.C. and the town of Dun Laoghaire. Stillorgan wil shortly be pulled down, Nutgrove is a mature centre and the Tenant Mix at the Square is far from what it once was.

Secondly access Dundrum sits on the Luas line which makes it very convenient for non-food shopping, the Luas has also led to far higher densities along its route which have provided a very affluent customer base. It is also well connected to the local road network although you can see times when it has quite an adverse effect on same.

Thirdly centre on the basis of scale also made it very attractive to some retailers who previously had no presence here, the one thing that strikes me about the centre is the sheer number of outlets.

I do agree though it is a good centre but we are yet to see a great shopping centre and if it were located in Athlone or Clonmel or Belfast I doubt that I would be rushing back, except maybe once a year before Christmas.

Just going back through this discussion, picking out some useful bits, as I go along.

True, the inside is just like every other shopping centre. But I still maintain it integrates well with older Dundrum.

By this Devin, I think you are coming from the observation, that many shopping centres just landed from outer space on top of some pheripheral site, and just created acres of parking spaces around them. It is quite true, that Dundrum adopted a different approach, it didn’t do the usual thing. It seems a bit obvious I guess, but yeah, what you have said is true and fairly simple to understand. I am not in the habit of looking at very many suburban shopping centres from a design perspective, so at first I didn’t quite notice how much Dundrum departs from the norm. You are obviously much quicker at noticing things about suburbia than I am. I feel more familiar with urban or rural sites I have to confess. Some other poster mentions how the site itself was an industrial site acquired for a mere 10 million. Which for a site, like this, seems quite small. I guess it highlights, something about strategic location having much more potential, than a massive arbitrary green field site development.

I guess, with your above observation Devin, you have underlined a fairly obvious fact: that is, where the circa 1980s shopping centre concept, would have came from,… accompanied with an explosion in personal car ownership, cities got the bright idea to do shopping centres as a big huge space, with enough space for loads and loads of cars. Shopping centres nearly became a car park with some shops, as opposed to being some shops with car parking. The shops were almost an afterthought, the buildings and the architecture were made to last for ten years or so, and that was it. Dundrum struggles to re-address that imbalance, is a start, to getting a more sane balance between car lot and shopping space. Dundrum centre does feel a little more like some shops with some car parking, as opposed to the other way around. The initial impetus behind the shopping centre concept may have been: provide loads of car parking spaces, and the rest will take care for itself. But I guess, there are many examples of centres around, where the ‘rest’ didn’t take care of itself very well. Maybe shopping centres aren’t that simple, maybe Dundrum does look at the design problem more in depth.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The Cresent Shopping centre in Limrick is been expanded further at the momemt , does anyone have any idea of the plans
?
all i know is that H&M ,Zara amd Next are the main tenants , and the SC will increase to about a 100 units.

Suburban shopping centre design is the architecture of despair. It’s so depressing that I believe it encourages young people to get the hell out and explore the rest of the world…until they get some kids and have to slink back out to semi-hell.

The Stephens Green centre got a lot of stick for its wedding cake shape and crappy approximation of the musée d’orsay but Lexington is right and it does look better than the competitors. Also it has an exterior rather than a hundred foot brick wall like you find around the sides of the Dundrum ‘Town Centre’.

@lexington wrote:

St. Stephen’s Green SC.

Any opinions?

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3134&page=3&pp=25

&

https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=24756&postcount=59

&

https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=24701&postcount=46

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https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=24722&postcount=50

refer to

https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=24756&postcount=59

It is an ageing investment with little or no architectural merit vis-a-vis its contemporaries and the air-conditioning system needs a full- refit.

Edited :p

…awkward silence…

😀

The St Stephen’s Green Centre has held up very well – it is often forgotton that it was the largest shopping centre in Ireland when completed 😮
(till the Square opened in 1990(?))

The Green Centre has a high-spec interior and interest is injected into its layout with the ‘conservatory’ stores filling the ground floor, and the store type refreshingly changes as you move up the floors. But as pointed out before, the floor access arrangements never worked – often wondered if this was deliberate to force the customer to walk long distances to get to the stairs, window shopping in the process.

In terms of the stores, never been an attraction for me – dominated by female fashion and over-priced ‘niche’ stores on the lower levels.

Agreed the new Kylemore space is very fine – and the seating that has always overlooked the Green looks amazing (though I’ve never gone over).
I’d hate to see the Green Centre ‘updated’ and recieve the straight line treatment. It is what it is, of its time, so just leave it alone.
Agreed the air-con needs updating, the Regency green panels would do with a facelift (bet it’ll be beige!), and the exterior steelwork needs repainting too – but that’s all.

There is a much wider issue, you need to absorb in order to fully grasp what the shopping centre is about. As I often say about urban design, the worse thing possible that you can do, is to just view its facets in isolation. That is typically the sort of ’cause-effect’ mentality we now have in urban design. Running a country and considering urban design, have something in common, it is about the interaction of so many influences, it is all just one big system.

So just bearing this in mind, I am now going to demonstrate, how developments in the urban environment of Dublin are inter-related in their nature. Indeed, how the Financial Services industry development, the closure of banking premises all over the city,… or just the plain lack of investment in the existing banking premises,… and the idea of a Shopping centre retail space,… as just a type of financial service,… for ordinary joe soap people who do not deal in equities and assets, but rather in commodities and consumables.

The key thing to understanding all of this, is the transformation from a world based upon atoms and physical things – to one based on bits and information flow.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The Gold Standard.

Just after World War II, the Bretton Woods Agreement fixed a conversion rate between dollars adn gold at $35 an ounce, and in turn set exchange rates between the dollar and other currencies. The U.S. government was obliged to convert dollars into gold upon request, using the cache held at Fort Knox. In 1971, saddled by a dwindling gold supply, a persistent recession, and an expensive war in Vietnam, President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Since then, the value of currencies has been fixed solely by what the markets think they are worth. We maintain a polite fiction that money stands for a valuable commodity, but it now represents nothing more than beliefs.

The implications of the end of the gold standard reach far beyond the passionate debates of that time, because of an apparently unrelated event that was quietly happening in a handful of laboratories: in 1971 the ARPANET entered into regular service. This was a project supported by the U.S. Defense Department Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) to create a computer network that had no central control and multiple ways to route messages, just the thing to survive a nuclear attack. In 1971 it had all of fifteen host machines. Its original research function was soon forgotten as the network filled with people sending E-mail, and connecting more computers. With millions of hosts on it by 1989, DARPA gave up on trying to manage the experiment, and the Internet was born.

At the end of the gold standard, computing was done by relatively isolated mainframes; computers were needed to record financial trends but did not create them. With the arrival of instantaneous global connectivity and distributed computing, money can now travel at the speed of light, anywhere, anytime, changing its very nature. The only physical difference between a million and a billion electronic dollars is the storage of ten extra bits to fit the zeros; money has become one more kind of information.

The Electronic Penny.

After all, what could be more useless than a penny? They travel between bowls on shop counters and jars on bureaus because it’s too much trouble to take them back to the bank. There’s a solid economic argument that the net cost of handling pennies exceeds their worth, therefore they should be eliminated as the smallest currency unit. The future of the penny does not look bright.

Qualify that: the future of a physical penny does not look bright. The value of electronic pennies is just beginning to be appreciated. On the Internet the packets of data representing financial exchanges are a drop in the bucket compared to high-bandwidth media such as video. THere’s plenty of room to send much more of them. The total amount of money in circulation can’t go up, but the size of a transaction can certainly go down. The overhead in selling a product sets a floor on what people are willing to purchase. Either you buy a CD, or you don’t. If, however, the CD arrives as bits on the network, you could pay for it a track at a time. Rather than buying an expensive video game cartridge, you could be billed for each level of the game as you play. Your taxes that pay for garbage collection, or highway maintenance, could be collected each time you take out the trash or drive your car.

Value derived from the market.

Stepping back to recognise that it is more natural to view electronic money as comprising the combination of data describing quantity and algorithms specifying valuation, it then becomes possible to create combinations that are useful for purposes far from high finance. Think what could happen if e-cash contained the means for ordinary people to add rules. A child’s allowance might be paid in dollars that gain value based on the stability of the child’s account balance, to make the benefits of saving apparent in the short term instead of just through the long-term accrual of interest. Or a store’s price guarantee could be implemented by pricing an item in dollars that stay active after the transaction, and that have a value derived from the market for that item. You don’t need to search for the lowest price; the money can.

Tax policies.

Such goals are currently implemented by familiar mechanisms such as tax policies and sales contracts, without needing something so ambitious as a redefinition of the nature of money. But as the money, and the information about how the money can be and is being spent, merge in packets of economic information running around networks, the distinction between the money and the supporting information becomes less and less meaningful, until it becomes simpler to recognise the financial packets as a new definition of money.

Taken from Neil Gershenfeld’s book, When Things Start to Think.

This is just some random thoughts I had while visiting Dundrum Shopping Centre earlier this year,… I have bits to change, edit and add to this piece, but I might as well get something up for the moment.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Building Organisation.

Even though the building is huge, the plan organisation of the retail units on the site, is simplicity itself. It is like a huge accordion, with the major ‘mega-stores’ book-ending the small retail units in between.

Transport Interchange.

Lets look at an airport for a second. An airport in itself is really a transport hub or interchange. Because from the one point you have buses, taxis, car parking, sometimes trains (except in Ireland, where airports never have trains) and you have flights going to all different destinations around the world.

The Dundrum shopping centre interior experience, does feel a lot like an airport in terms of its scale and treatment. That would be fine if the shopping centre was located next to a couple of major transportation interchanges. If it was in close proximity to an Airport, a major docklands port and a train station or tube station. The argument that Dundrum Shopping Centre is next to a LUAS stop, is only barely plausible. Now if Dundrum Shopping Centre had been next to two different transport systems intersecting, then I would feel the ‘airport’ aesthetic inside the centre had been justified.

The rear car park is a notoriously ill-defined and ill-considered space. It shows very little imagination at all, in how people might navigate through the sea of parked cars. Even the space immediately in front of the centre at the rear has been sacrificed for more car parking spaces, when the reasonable thing to do, would be to place a couple of benchs and treat the space with the attention and details it deserves. Because lets face it, on those nice days, you really don’t want to sit inside a glasshouse and sip coffee while looking at the escalators full of families and kids going up and down.

Here I really feel the designers got things backways. By lavishing far too much attention upon the ‘rock garden’ space with fountains etc, etc,… at the front of the site, which is closest to the existing Dundrum village. And not paying enough attention to the heavily used space at the rear of the centre which is sourthern facing, and could have worked as a very pleasant space to sit down on nice days, with good views of the blue hills in the distance.

The bicycle as a means of transport, wasn’t even considered in the entire design. Despite managing to consume a million or so acres of space. Well not quite that much, but does anyone know exactly the area of the Dundrum site? By not catering for bicycles at all, it is almost as if Dundrum was trying to encourage obesity in the Irish nation. This is definitely a black mark against the whole design concept. But while the design doesn’t cater for people who want to walk or cycle from the neighbouring areas – the complex is nonetheless strategically centered from a car infrastructural point of view – and will be set to become a focus for much of the car-oriented residential development stretching out as far as the Wicklow hills.

Cafes.

This was an oversight I think, by the ‘ideas people’ in the design of Dundrum Shopping Centre. In Dundrum Shopping Centre you have quite a large Eason’s book store, and you have many, many places to drink coffee, buns and all manner of refreshments. But somehow, it never managed to put two and two together, and give the visitors to Dundrum Shopping Centre, a bookshop-cafe. I mean, most of the city centre book sellers have used this concept in different ways down through the years – why didn’t Dundrum try out some form of the bookstore-cafe? Books have always used a technique of selling, which is known as ‘sampling at the source’. Even ‘Amazon.com’, the huge American online bookstore has managed to digitally scan millions of books, and make that content ‘sample-able’ via their website, so that online customers would get a similar experience of buying books, to those in a physical bookstore.

Just while I am at it – another thing about cafes. While the rest of Dublin is trying to do ‘outdoor’ cafes on side-walks and open spaces all over the city. Outside in Dundrum, where space seems to abound, there isn’t one single outdoor cafe experience in the entire complex. There is all sorts of uses, that you can ‘combine’ a cafe with,… with furniture and household goods, you can have an Art Gallery which has a cafe,… but in Dundrum, the food outlet, is just a food outlet.