public #4: 21st century guide to life

21stPublic

#4

Century

Guide

Lifeto

21stPublic

#4

Century

Guide

Lifeto

“ Dream as if you’ll live forever

live as if you’ll die today.”

James Dean

Copyright © Woods Bagot Pty Ltd

All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing. While we have tried to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publisher accepts no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or resultant consequences including any loss or damage arising from reliance on information in this publication. Any opinions in this publication are solely those of the named author. The publisher, Editorial Panel, other contributors and Woods Bagot do not endorse such views and disclaim all liability arising from this publication.

Published by Woods Bagot Research Press Podium Level 1 3 Southbank Avenue Southbank VIC 3000 Telephone +61 3 8646 6600

Printed in Australia July 2008 Editors: Stephan C Reinke and Rob Steul Public Editorial Manager: Nicola Brew Editorial team: Nik Karalis, Nicola Brew, Lucy Moloney, Illuminant Partners (Beijing), Mandate Communications

Designed by Cornwell Creative design and direction: Steven Cornwell Designer: Paul Monkivitch and Huey Lau Design Manager: Anna Johnston Printed by: Finsbury Green ISBN 978-0-9775409-9-0

For further Woods Bagot Research Press publications please visit www.woodsbagot.com

Public#421stCentury

GuidetoLife

A Guide to

the Guide

Stephan C Reinke

008

Luxury

Star Inflation

Rob Steul

016

Home Sweet Home

Nik Karalis

026

Rejuvenation

Barefoot Luxury

Rob Steul

& Chris Savva

044

Flight

The Journey

Kevin Pollard

064

First Class

Traveller

Vince Pirrello

& Lucy Moloney

074

Cities

Urban Life...

Coming Soon

Richard Marshall

092

The Branded

In-Between

Martha Schwartz

& Heather Ring

098

Growing Pains

Stuart Uren

108

Society’s Double Helix

David Thorpe & J C Herz

114

The Mix

A New Revolution

Stephan C Reinke

132

Unconventional

Nik Karalis

142

Beyond Sculpture

Antony Wood

154

Work

14 Hour City

James Calder

164

Silver Lining

Jeremy Myerson

174

Play

Work More

Play Less

Nik Karalis

184

Barcode

Rob Steul

& Troy Wear

190

The Big Picture

Vince Pirrello

& Lucy Moloney

198

Shop

For Sale: China

Jason Marriott

& Iris S Hwang

210

Treasure Towers

Stephen Jones

& Iris S Hwang

216

Mall Theatrics

Mathilde Lucas

226

Retail of the Future:

Yongxin Mall

Jason Marriott &

Omid Ferdowsian

236

Enlighten Me

Omid Ferdowsian

& Tewa Sirilaklang

242

Home

Extend Yourself

Nik Karalis

260

Subtropical Villas

Vince Pirrello

268

Public#421stCentury

GuidetoLife

A Guide to the Guide/ 008 – 00921st Century Guide to Life

A Guide to the Guide

The notion that there is a singular definition of twenty-first century lifestyle is instantly debunked by a visit to the phenomenon known as Dubai, the desert kingdom in the United Arab Emirates. The collection, confluence and collision of the world’s hoteliers, resort designers, luxury retailers, international financial services, residential fantasies, yacht designers and exotic restaurateurs has created a world destination, a lifestyle sample plate, literally from the empty sands on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

Try to pin down the metamorphoses of lifestyle in the world’s tri-city axis—New York, London, Hong Kong (with Tokyo to soon be added): pubs become gourmet restaurants; Asia meets Cuba on the menu; inner city parking lots become animated new mixed use urban communities; a ‘big house’ downtown becomes the centre for style, cuisine, music and fashion vibrating on seven levels; and the serendipity of dialogue in the shops, streets, bars and restaurants of our urban fabric become the conference rooms of our time.And just when you think you have read all the guides and know your way around, you find a civic building which operates not only as an occasional venue for a set piece event but also as a classical concert hall, fashion show catwalk, music awards venue, arts club installation, film studio and late night club destination, all in one.

A Guide to the Guide/ 010 – 01121st Century Guide to Life

Trying to construct a twenty-first century guide to lifestyle presents challenges and certain similarities with Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’. The unexpected and sometimes shocking presents itself at every turn and our taste for diversity, richness, aroma and flavour collude to take us on amazing journeys: from tranquillity to exhilaration; from luxury to simplicity; from the sublime to the absurd; from the jazz of the city to the solace of nature. The creatures and denizens of the various spaces, buildings, places and landscapes represent the broad cultural mix which we embrace in our daily design efforts.The opportunity to hear the whispers, the clues and the rumours that issue forth from this eclectic group abound in the early part of the twenty-first century on a global scale.

This complex language informs the ideas and the work illustrated in our ‘21st Century Guide to Life’. Our desire is to capture and incorporate the diversity of cultures, geographical influences and the rich history that surround us in our international practices.You will also find a view of the future in our guide; a place where the demarcation between work and play becomes more blurred than ever before. We believe that this phenomenon will add new layers to the way we live and work in this early part of the century. We hope our ‘21st Century Guide to Life’ will exhilarate, amuse, enlighten and challenge you. In our opinion, lifestyle is like reading an excellent book; if you don’t experience all that’s on offer, you haven’t even finished the first chapter.Stephan C Reinke Director of Lifestyle RIBA, FAIA

Century

toLuxury

#4PublicPublic#4 21st Century

Guide to Luxury

Luxury in the future:

/ Evolves continuously.

/Personifies youth, irrespective of age.

/Is highly demanding.

/Must represent values and principles.

/Is now driven by inconspicuous consumption.

/Reflects individual personality and self image.

/Can evoke irrational behaviour.

/Will be sought increasingly by r

etiring baby boomers.

/Respects heritage.

/Embodies unique tailored experiences.

/Means quality time and attention to wellbeing.

/Extends beyond standard star ratings.

/Star Inflation

Rob Steul

/Home Sweet Home

Nik Karalis

“ The interpretation of luxury has

become completely individual. No one

can define luxury for others any more.”

Aaron Simpson, Quintessentially Limited

21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 016 – 017

STAR INFL ATIONby Rob Steul

21st Century Guide to Life

10 Trinity Square, London, UK. Woods Bagot


Remember when everyone knew that the best hotels were rated five-star? It was a time when hotels were judged independently and awarded stars based on facilities, quality and service. This worked well in an age of commonality based on widely accepted criteria, for a while anyway. But these stars often missed rating the most important of qualities—the ‘Guest Experience’.

More recently we have witnessed the inevitable creeping inflation of star ratings. The six- star came first, and then new claims of yet another ultimate, the seven-star hotel, launched with great media coverage and hype. What comes next, eight, nine, or even twelve stars? What does all this mean for hoteliers, owners, designers and most importantly, our collective guests?


How high can they go and what are they really aiming for?


Burj Al Arab

10 Trinity Square

Hilton Melbourne

One Aldwych

The Windsor


In many ways, this rise in defining hotel quality has acknowledged great advances in creativity in how hotels and resorts are designed, built and operated. But all too often it can be misleading, especially if self proclaimed for promotional gain. So, is this inflation simply self indulgence on a corporate or a national scale, or a bona fide change in the way hotels are delivering their promise?

Perhaps the six, or even seven, star hotel can be explained on a relative scale, a realisation that an exceptional effort and achievement of a building can elevate it beyond the current highest standard. The much talked about Burj al Arab Hotel in Dubai for example exceeded most other hotels in terms of cost per room, scale, luxury fitout and service, and could not accept being evaluated with established criteria. Yet, the advent of the new six and seven star ratings challenges the long established relative positions held among the top world hotels and can be contentious, especially as it seems to focus on bricks and mortar rather than on the service and guest experience. As Gordon Campbell Gray, a leading London based hotelier, says, “To say you are six or seven star, says that you believe you are better than the world’s best hotels … better than Claridges, the George V, the Peninsula … that is a very big statement”.

Surely the rating of a hotel cannot be purely established on the quantity of money spent building an iconic shape, or the square metres of marble lining the interiors. It must be about the quality of the guest experience, the feeling of being in the right place, living up to the lifestyle aspirations of the guest. This is a far more elusive factor in hotel evaluation and one which has not been at the heart of the previous rating system.

The question of what constitutes a top-rated hotel is hard to pin down in an age of greater provision of opulence and extravagance. Luxury is certainly not just about the physical appointments, or even the quality of services provided, but is most about the qualities of the all important guest experience. Harder to quantify, and quite personal to the guest, this ‘X factor’ is what really makes a great hotel.

Our need to rate and compareOur globalised, market-driven economy

seems consumed with the need to rate virtually everything. This tends to breed increasing competition for attention between all manner of products and services to be better than the rest, diminishing the value of ratings themselves. How often these terms are used to identify everyday products in our lives! We now have luxury butter, five-star fridge/freezers and premium sun-cream. This marketing free-for-all is surely diluting the meaning of these definitive words, and begs the question—who the heck are they who rate these things anyway?

Who they areIn some countries, for example Spain and

France, there is an official body with standard criteria for classifying hotels which is almost scientific. It has become an exercise in checking boxes. For instance a bathroom without five fixtures (a shower, a bathtub, a toilet and two wash basins) cannot be five-star. But in other countries there are no official standards, leaving the hotels to establish their own rankings— the shortcomings of this are obvious. There have been attempts at unifying classification systems so that they become one internationally recognised and reliable standard, but this has only achieved limited success regionally, such as in Europe and North America. And regardless, there are often great differences between quality and level of accommodation at the same star rating between countries, and even within countries.

Besides which, none of these criteria seems to tell us much about what the hotel is actually like, how it will feel for the guests to stay there, how it will engage their senses and provide a memorable experience. Some other way of quantifying these crucial aspects is needed.

The new ratingsIn an age of connectivity, traditional ratings

are being challenged. Cable TV travel programmes, design and travel books, and most influential, an array of internet websites allow consumers to precisely filter for particular interests. These sites, such as www.designhotels.com and www.hiphotels.com, with their associated publications, allow guests to read evaluations from people he or she relate to and trust. People using these books and websites know that the evaluators share their own interests and criteria. Other new authorities are internet booking sites, many of which allow guests to rate their own experiences. This allows a much more democratic approach to rating hotels and they tend to be much closer to defining the real guest experience.

All of this reinforces the fact that there is not one viable rating system. It is as if there are two separate worlds, one where traditional hotel values are rated 1–5 stars, and the other where a new and different crop of hotels and resorts are vying for attention on the world stage communicating their offer through websites, media and advertising— all contributing to star inflation.


One-star Tourist level;

practical accommodation; small rooms, limited services

Two-star Limited service, but larger

rooms and more facilities such as ensuite and in-room TV

Three-star Larger establishments with

more formal levels of service; laundry service available;

room service of breakfast only

Four-star Superior comfort;

all bedrooms with ensuite (bath, fitted shower and toilet);

more spacious rooms and luxurious public areas;

well trained staff; emphasis on food and beverage and service;

twenty-four hour room service; dry cleaning service available

Five-star Highest international standard quality in accommodation, facilities, services and cuisine; striking accommodation throughout (first mention of design);

well cared for by professional staff providing flawless guest services

Beyond Five-star?

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 022 – 023

Where is this coming from?To answer this we must look at our global,

mobile society for the answer, and it is on a planetary scale. Global transport has become very accessible, opening up the most remote corners of the world to super luxury. There really are almost no destination surprises left, with global competition for tourist dollars fierce. The result is ‘destination competition’, with cities, regions and even whole nations vying for a greater piece of the global tourist pie, shamelessly self promoting their wares. We have seen whole new tourist locations open up in recent years, fuelled by the shift of global wealth and with their story told by media, hype and all. The worldwide marketing machine of the global economy has misguidedly linked the concept of luxury and unique travel experiences with the high octane world of internet speed, high fashion, air-brushed celebrity and the quest for the super-natural body, resulting in a sort of architectural equivalent of unattainable, extreme perfection.

The response by many designers to address operators’ and owners’ needs to be heard above this cacophony has sparked the advent of ‘celebrity buildings’. Many misinterpret the ideas of luxury, service and an authentic guest experience and simply try to stand out by designing ever-increasingly elaborate forms and iconic shapes.

The quest to outdo one another has resulted in the ironic situation where quality of the guest experience is actually being driven down, while star rating numbers increase. Therefore, do we really need the old star system anymore?

Navigate by the stars, or be guided by the experience?

As we have seen, the old system of star ratings was based on a rather formal, and fairly dull, set of criteria on a checklist. As familiarity of international hotel brands has bred confidence in quality levels and services provided, the once important items are taken for granted now. For example we all know from experience that the Marriott in Hong Kong will have the same quality towels as one in London or New York. There will be a terry cloth robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, a hairdryer will be provided, etc. Reassurance of the brand and brand standards meets expectations, making guests feel safe and secure in their choice of hotel.

What now is becoming far more important is the guest experience. What is the place like, how will a guest feel, what are the unique aspects of the hotel which make it a genuine experience authentic to its context and location?

Rating this experience is more difficult, maybe impossible, as it is about far more subjective judgement. The first major signs of this new experiential based valuation of hotels came with the rise of the ‘boutique’ hotel. These hotels were fuelled by the desire of people to have a more intimate, personal experience at a scale which was more unique and special. The ratings and standards of the past, while driving up the overall basic quality, had resulted in hotels becoming very similar, almost banal. This resulted in a mutiny of sorts with demand from the public that hotels become neighbourhood scale again, where one could feel at home and integrate with the local culture during their stay.

Guests were looking for a genuine experience, looking for individuality and the exotic and, most importantly for designers and operators alike, were using their choice of hotel as an expression of their own lifestyle aspirations, about how staying there made them feel.

It was coverage in the media about that return to the unique, the special, and the intimate which drove the success of these hotels rather than dependence on hotel brand positioning or star rating. Many of these hotels have been very successful and blend a modern, stylish physical design with the personalised service and intimate scale of the traditional five-star hotel formerly found only in the world’s finest capital cities. For example, Campbell Gray’s approach in his hotels is to not overuse the word luxury, but rather “change it to quality”, concentrating on his guest’s experience in his hotel, providing a refuge of good taste, comfort and calm. These boutiques redefined a more traditional approach to star ratings backed up by the reputation of the hotelier.

The danger is that the success of these types of hotels lives and dies depending on individual hoteliers such as Campbell Gray, not on brand standards and manuals. Most problematic, the word ‘boutique’ has now been hijacked by those using it merely as a marketing gimmick and, like the star ratings before it, its meaning has been devalued.

Is it time for a new system?

Market research In 2007 Woods Bagot conducted a survey

to understand what customers in the UK were looking for in hotels. The poll of 5000 consumers showed that sixty-five per cent of respondents aged 35–54 were less likely to place trust in a star rating when choosing their hotel for work or leisure and more likely to look to the internet for independent reviews from their peers. Remarkably, the results marked a turn away from commonly held views that younger people are more likely to source information from the net, with 18–35 year-olds actually showing a preference for relying on star ratings over online reviews. What this seems to suggest is that travellers with more experience have recognised the massive inconsistencies in the star rating system across Europe and the world. Once you’ve stayed at a hotel that is both inferior and more expensive than a previous hotel at the same rating, you lose faith in the rating’s ability to assure quality.

The research also found that fifty-five per cent of people were looking for unique accommodation and were fed up with staying in the mass market, chain hotels currently on offer. The majority of young consumers aged 18–35 saw the most viable type of hotel for the future to be the ‘global boutique brand’, which offers the security of a named brand but also offers the more individual travel experience that modern consumers demand. This is reflective of the up and coming generation which is constantly accruing spending power. They are looking to spend leisure and work time in hotels that afford the complete security of a trusted brand with an experience that is anything but standardised and mass market.

Stars used to define the luxurious, now they should express the experiential.


A focus on a creative, collaborative approach to hotel design is crucial to advancing

hotel quality and enhancing the guest experience without resorting

to the hype of star inflation.


Simple but exquisite. One Aldwych, London. Reproduced with permission

Big Bang Theory We have established that the measuring criteria and meaning of stars has changed dramatically, that quality of hotels should be about the experience of the place rather than simply excessive luxury, and that the individual hotelier, designer and guest all contribute to a hotel’s success.

A focus on a creative, collaborative approach to hotel design is crucial to advancing hotel quality and enhancing the guest experience without resorting to the hype of star inflation.

As designers, we approach our projects not only as architects, but as co-creators in collaboration with the hotelier, essentially designing the guest experience not just the building. In our projects, we strive to understand the context of the site, the local culture, architectural vernacular, the hotelier’s aspirations and the guest’s needs, to create a unique property which exceeds expectations and delivers an authentic experience unique to location. In this way, we unlock great value in the site and enhance the capital value of the building by helping the operator achieve their aspirations. This is something that has real selling power, not a self serving sign on the door proclaiming it to be a six or seven-star property.

This approach requires each of the parties in the design process to be very open with each other and treat each other as valued partners in the creative process. It is a coming together of very different groups (operators, owners, architects and designers) traditionally not always having the best reputation for working well together.

The process we employ in every hotel project includes working through various hypothetical guest experiences and modelling those with the operator. For example, in our 10 Trinity Square project in the City of London, we have explored various arrival sequences starting from touch down at the airport right through to entering the guest room itself. We examined the various guest profiles of those who would frequent the hotel. For example, we looked at the all important, frequent returning guest needing a sense of home (think country pile not city building); the first time tourist wishing to taste the essence of London; and the city banker, wanting seamless, flexible service in elegant, but not oppressively opulent, surroundings.

Each of these guests’ wants and needs are different; it is our job to provide for these various scenarios. Hal Thannisch, Executive Vice President for the owner/operator of 10 Trinity Square, Thomas Enterprises, states, “Our desire is that each project expresses its own individuality and provides authentic experiences for guests”.

In creating One Aldwych in London, Campbell Gray and designer Mary Fox Linton created some breathtakingly simple core values for defining the hotel. He understood his guests first and created the building and operation around them. He states that “one cannot simply build more than a four-star hotel, the rest must be service, service and service”. His strong belief that the “intelligent guest” is actually offended by waste, and looks at excess relating to luxury as being very old fashioned, has been central in his approach to the design and operation of the property. The result is that One Aldwych is at once traditional but comfortably modern, classic yet very stylish, relaxed yet reassuringly formal. Campbell Gray says the way forward is “concentrating on less, and making it exquisite.” With this thoughtful confidence, One Aldwych is proudly five-star and does not join in on the hype of star inflation.

This approach is infinitely different from the tendency of many new hotel projects to go over the top on luxury, often appearing as tacky and wasteful, while hiding behind an invented star rating.

Being a part of this level of interaction with the hotelier, allows architects to respond to high operational aspirations with inventive designs which support them. We treat all projects as an opportunity to create a unique and memorable guest experience. Fitting out luxury appointments is the easy part, it is much more challenging to bring to life the spirit of a hotel and create a timeless design which quietly and confidently stands out in a noisy crowd. The future lies in authenticity, honesty and soul, not in gold plated taps, or self assessed stars. In a world filled with so much choice, yet layered with commonality, it is the only way.


by Nik Karalis


In these opening years of the twenty-first century the concept of luxury is constantly evolving; increasingly it is an intangible experience that appeals to a sense of wellbeing and state of mind rather than being about status. Architecture that nourishes and uplifts creates luxury in which to live, work and play.

As an inspiration we can recount the era of the mid-twentieth century modernists which was based on a new phase of domesticity and optimism after the Second World War. It was a place where everything was in its rightful order, a place that we know as Home Sweet Home, that sinking feeling of relief the moment you enter into its protective, secure and comfortable domain—amah!

This period of youthful innocence and exuberance is characterised in the idealist period of mid-century, post-war America. The country witnessed an extraordinary time of increased wealth, living standards and the birth of consumer culture. The future seemed certain and the way forward was clear. Consumerism redefined cultural status, economic regeneration and social renewal as a symbol of progress and prosperity.

“From 1948 until 1955, American homes were being built at the rate of one million per year in the world’s largest housing boom” (Walker, 1996, p. 253).The dream home was now affordable with abundant creature comforts, reflecting a new society which avoided dwelling in the past and instead reaffirmed its faith in the future, a future that was created out of the advent of the Modern Movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

During the mid-1950s the International Style1 reached its height of popularity as architects including Richard Neutra, Paul Rudolph, and Charles and Ray Eames working primarily in Southern California and Florida, were at the forefront of developments where beauty through technology began to redefine domestic design. Contemporary houses exploited the freedom of planning that skeleton (column free) construction allowed, with horizontal bands of windows, flat roofs, smooth walls with no ornamentation and integrating the outdoors as a major part of the living environment.

“It was a place where everything was in its rightful order, a place that we know as Home Sweet Home, that sinking feeling of relief the moment you enter into its protective, secure and comfortable domain—amah!”


At the pinnacle of this period was the Ivy League, an elitist period founded in the 1950s which centred on athleticism and scholarships and perfect family unity. Nearly sixty years and two generations later, elements of this period have been combined with the futuristic exuberance of the mid-twentieth century modernists to become the inspiration for Ivy—a mixed usage hospitality venue for the Merivale Group launched by Justin Hemmes, CEO.

In their youth Justin’s parents, Merivale and Mr John, began a trend-setting fashion house out of Sydney which later expanded to Melbourne. The House of Merivale was one of Australia’s first speciality fashion boutiques. They occupied small corner buildings and created a power house of casual, ready to wear fashion items. Merivale and Mr John slowly moved into the hospitality industry by acquiring prominent small corner heritage hotels and turning them into prominent Sydney icon bars which eventually culminated into a collection of ten inter-related hospitality venues and the pre-eminent Establishment Hotel located in a restored historic building. The latter was the brainchild and training ground for Justin.

It is with this experience that the Merivale Group has launched their latest enterprise, Ivy. Targeted at a different youthful and well travelled audience, who are culturally aware and competent, his genius is to combine retail fashion, street life, art and architecture, music, work, gastronomy, horticulture and his love of water into an extraordinary ensemble.

Everyone talks about the need for diversity and complexity in our lives. Justin will deliver one of the most vibrant and youthful meeting places in the world. It will be a world within a world, but with the flavouring of ultra chilled casualness.

Ivy will be a small house in the big city where everyone is welcome and guests’ needs are anticipated, to offer respite from the overwhelming demands of the city. With an intimacy that is encapsulated in a private residence, it will be a place for a moment’s relaxation and reprieve, from the demanding city tempo, as well as being a vibrant and stimulating meeting or working place—a celebration of life.

Whilst it may be a very large house, Ivy essentially retains all the qualities of conventional domesticity. Key elements of the idealised 1950s modernist residence have been reinterpreted and over-scaled into a sequence of indoor and outdoor rooms across two adjoining buildings. The first set of rooms surrounds a landscaped courtyard and the other rooms are a sequence of spaces that culminate with a roof top pool. Ivy occupies two sites linked with a network of mini lanes and a main George Street frontage. There are two main buildings linked via a basement. Between them they contain twenty hospitality venues, twelve retail outlets, two levels of offices and two penthouse floors.

Drawing on the theme of the outdoor room, the first of the two buildings has a sunken garden atrium at its centre piece with overgrown balconies and interconnected levels. It will act as a shaded garden oasis for Sydney. The second building rejoices in the sun, a roof top pool club overlooked by restaurants, gazebos and pool side lounges, serviced by a lower level change room, come chill out club and a total floor dedicated to beauty therapy.

Ivy, Sydney, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot in collaboration with Merivale, Hecker Phelan and Guthrie and Cornwell Design

21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 032 – 03321st Century Guide to Life

21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 272 – 27321st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 034 – 035


As explored in ‘Work more play less’ (p. 184), cities require a diversity of uses that begin to respond to a new work-life balance. Inspired by the heady spirit of the age which led to significant innovation and experimentation with our framework for living over fifty years ago, Ivy explores a hospitality model which proposes a new framework of de-regulated work and play opportunities, all under the one complex and hosted by no other than Justin Hemmes. It is the ultimate constructed experience towards ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ (the new tagline of the Merivale Group). Ivy will be a total experience evoking the comfort of maternal care and support with a slightly irreverent re-positioning of the house wife/hostess role playing.

This hospitality model can offer a pathway to reinstate the equilibrium of life balance within our new urban contexts. By creating an uplifting environment for real human connectivity, Ivy is a place where you can create, work, entertain, dine, recover, indulge, interact, sleep, rest, swim, and enjoy art, music and gardens. You will never want to leave and you will definitely never check out. But you can come any time of day…

Ivy is a key calculated mixture of diverse, contemporary components that will redefine a truly creative and motivational lifestyle.

Twenty-first century we’re ready!

21st Century Guide to Luxury/ 038 – 03921st Century Guide to Life

“Ivy is a place where you can create, work, entertain, dine, recover, indulge, interact, sleep, rest, swim, and enjoy art, music and gardens.”

Public#4 21st Century

Guide toRejuvenation

Frequent escapes to rejuvenate and revitalise means:

/Intensity of time and space.

/Specific cultural and geographical awareness.

/Structured environments to attend to health and wellbeing.

/More spa resorts and hospital hotels.

/An increase in cruise and long distance train experiences.

/Sabbatical vacations and sea-change.

/Remote real estate at a premium.

/Holiday homes as personal reflections of self.

/Resort design specific to loc

ation.

/Preservation of the earth’s natural beauty.

/Luxury is uncluttered space for privacy and contemplation.

/Barefoot Luxury

Rob Steul & Chris Savva

“Barefoot luxury: Resorts c

onnecting

guests to the natural essen

ce of a location.”

Rob Steul, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Rejuvenation/ 044 – 045

The growth of the travel and leisure industry in recent times reflects our need to renew and refresh ourselves from the stress of modern life. In designing resorts and hotels across the world, Woods Bagot has asked these key questions: What is rejuvenation? Which conditions promote this state? How can we create places which enable the rejuvenation process? And can rejuvenation extend beyond the individual to revitalising the leisure industry itself? BAREFOOT

LUXURYby Rob Steul & Chris Savva


Designs must be created to appeal to the harried city dweller by building an escapist dream of a relaxed, casual, yet incredibly comfortable guest experience. We call this approach ‘barefoot luxury’—connecting the guest to the natural essence of the site, while providing luxury services in modern architecture. The designs seek to create resorts which feel much more like a casually elegant private residence, rather than a traditional hotel—think weatherboard beach house in the dunes, rather than the manicured garden of a resort.

Space and time are also today’s greatest luxury. Space can be the product of design; time the product of service. In working together with our clients and operators, the design team seeks to integrate quality service and a superior space to create a certain type of luxury.

The third vital ingredient of rejuvenation is healthy spaces. The quality of a resort location is not necessarily defined by size; it can be determined by considerate planning, excellent materials, and detailing. In order to rejuvenate oneself, the conditions of deterioration have to be stopped, then reversed. In the context of leaving modern life behind and seeking an escape this often means seeking the opposite of everyday existence. So, fast-paced life becomes slower-paced; crowded cities become spacious, natural places; stress and strains become relaxation; pollution becomes fresh air. Stimulation is also necessary, but the type of stimulation varies according to the environment itself.

Healthy spaces can promote rejuvenation through various means. The careful arrangement of architecture with landscape, sensitivity to human needs and comforts, careful selection and assembly of appropriate materials, and the creation of an environment, whether inside or outside that sits comfortably in the unique character and context of the site.

Designs must be created to appeal to the harried city dweller by building an escapist dream of a relaxed, casual, yet incredibly comfortable guest experience.

Ingredients for rejuvenationRejuvenation is by no means a new

phenomenon; the Victorians took trips to the seaside to escape the big cities. The seventies saw the trend of the package holiday emerge, with demand increasing throughout the eighties for this quick and easy escape route. With the nineties came a popular interest in adventure travel and themed resorts, and more recently in the noughties, spa resorts, second homes and integrated residential resorts have all mushroomed. Like any fashion trend lifecycle, each of these rejuvenation themes has a period of exclusivity and originality, which is rapidly superseded by a period of popularity, eventually descending into generic mediocrity. A period of ‘anti-fashion’ and waning interest may follow and lead inevitably to its death. Sometimes there is revival, a retro period.

There will always be a certain elevated luxury market—a trend that is ahead of the crowd and which always remains exclusive. This is relevant to the attainment of rejuvenation as the feeling of refreshment and returned vigour may occur quickly, and more impressively, when there is a sense of originality in the air. As fresh ideas emerge, they are accompanied by a feeling of exclusivity and are a pioneering escape route from the masses. Contemplate this; would you like to go with a group of people on a large package tour, or escape to an elite destination?

In addition to originality, another ingredient of rejuvenation is luxury. But what is luxury, exactly? Is experiencing a Michelin three-star restaurant service luxury? Do the decadent, so-called seven-star hotels offer luxury? As explored in ‘Star inflation’ (p. 16) there is some contention to answering these questions. However, there is another aspect of luxury that is highly relevant in contemporary resort design. Today, luxury can be defined as indulging in an experience away from the norm, far removed from the masses.

Rejuvenation beyond the individualWhat is the effect of rejuvenation? The

individual should feel ‘young once more’, experiencing feelings of health, inspiration, relaxation, stimulation, satisfaction. These may all be achieved through a destination that is far removed from the ‘maddening’ crowd and through a sense of true opulence, and finally in being in spaces which heal.

However, it is not only the individual that can be rejuvenated through considered resort design; this sense of renewal can be emulated throughout the travel and tourism industry, a destination can also be endowed with a new lease on life.

When a resort experience is realised with care by the owner, designer and operator, it achieves the conditions for a rejuvenating experience and produces a positive effect on the travel and tourism industry. The industry can be seen as progressive by offering up fresh and new approaches, achieving new levels of luxury and offering desirable destinations.

A well executed project can also have a positive effect on the regional location. Being associated with quality is an affirmative statement to the industry at large. In demonstrating consideration for the environment, the landscape and the location’s heritage, resort developments can set good examples for developments in the relevant country or region (see Minthis Hills vignette). Furthermore, in more specific circumstances a project may actually help to restore a rundown area in a regenerative and restorative way.

Fostering resorts that rejuvenateWoods Bagot is currently involved in projects in

all regions of the globe. Underpinning all the resort projects is the firm’s desire to create places which rejuvenate not only the individual, but the site, the local culture and the local economy, all in a very sustainable way. This involves sensitivity and understanding by the design team.

An understanding of the culture of the location is key to the success of a resort project. Woods Bagot, by its global nature, has a wealth of cultures which inform the understanding of a particular project and provide regional context. Nevertheless, the project team spends significant amounts of time researching specific cultures. In order to enable genuine rejuvenation and promote the healing effects of the resort location, the user often needs to experience the local culture as part of the process. Woods Bagot aims to respond to the relevant culture through use of forms and materials. In avoiding false themes and copying vernacular, the approach is to blend the culture with the benefits of modern capabilities. In this way it is an honest response and relevant offering (see Cape Verde vignette).

Such site development also requires deep understanding and respect of the land and environment and a sensitive approach to design is required. Our goal is to only lightly touch the existing landform and maximise the natural features, offering opportunities unique to each site location. An understanding of the climate informs the architecture and landscaping design. For example, the deep roof overhangs of tropical Belize protect from the sun and repel the rain, whereas the stone and deep reveals in Cyprus mitigate the sun and heat.

Every location is singular in its cultural expression; therefore each project involves a great deal of rigour in designing the forms of the buildings, the sequence of spaces and offering of a rejuvenating experience. Consideration of location, climate and culture manifests itself in the sculpting of the buildings on the land, the selection of materials and systems for the unique climate, and the optimum arrangement of spaces for a high level of service.

The Woods Bagot design approach takes into consideration health, true luxury and a sense of originality. In a timeless and elegant way, the resort can achieve a level of quality befitting the aspirations of our clients. In this way, the individual, the industry and the location can experience the uplifting experience of rejuvenation. Each one of the following sites is part of an established tourist destination which is in need of reinvigoration in terms of the designs that currently populate their regional market.

21st Century Guide to Life21st Century Guide to Life

Minthis Hills, greater area of Pafos, Cyprus Many of the developments in this region are quite brutal in their use of earthworks and excavations. Woods Bagot has designed this golfside residential estate with a sensitive approach to the hillside land, for example, cut and fill is minimised through the use of terracing and retaining walls. The outdoor spaces make use of the year-round clement weather and the materials are inspired from local trades of stone and timber work. The tranquil location is enhanced through strategic positioning of buildings to provide a sense of privacy and retreat.

Designed by Woods Bagot

Cesaria Resort, Cape VerdeThe dramatic backdrop of the volcanic São Vicente provides this site with a unique setting. The rugged landscape of steep valleys and escarpments which meet the ocean were strong drivers for the design concept. Hills are used to position hotels and residences, maximising valuable views of the sea. Oasis gardens provide a sense of protection while the natural landscapes beyond are maintained. The vibrant Cape Verde way of life is embraced through the provision of public spaces which cultivate the love of music and dance.


21st Century Guide to Rejuvenation/ 048 – 04921st Century Guide to Life


Le Bouchon, MauritiusThis integrated residential and hotel resort is located on part of the idyllic and uninterrupted coastline and is arranged to provide the highest possible value to all parts of the elongated site. By separating vehicle and pedestrian circulation, the user gets a sense of leaving it all behind. Careful study of contours has led to a site arrangement where the resort is connected by a series of cascading lagoons. The naturalised lagoons provide great inward views and spaces of activity for the residences which are also positioned to provide sea views on the majority of the site.


Placencia Resort, BelizePart of the client’s brief for this project was to raise design standards and sustainable construction in Central America. This unique, thirty-six acre resort caters for the discerning user and is located on a stunning long barrier island. Emphasis is on a generous quality of space and careful integration of landscape and architecture. The richness of the site’s ecology, with Caribbean Sea on one side and mangrove lagoon on the other, is capitalised through a masterplan arrangement which links the discrete sites via a bridge and central gardens. The architectural aesthetics of the hotel and residential buildings have been created with a modern take on a British colonial style and, along with the highly personalised level of service, creates a luxurious and elegant resort destination.



Space and time are today’s greatest luxury.



St Andrews, Mornington Peninsula, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot


“Think weatherboard beach villa in the dunes rather than the

manicured garden of a resort.”Rob Steul

21st Century Guide to Rejuvenation/ 058 – 05921st Century Guide to Life


Future flight will:

/Mean premium first class travel starts

at your front door.

/Create demand for smaller luxury airline carriers

and private first class terminals.

/Take people on cultural, experiential holidays.

/Continue to increase by necessity

due to globalisation.

/Be under scrutiny along with travel destinations

as consumers make choices dependent on trade,

human rights and the environment.

/Require new airport design to respond to larger

planes and increasing numbers of travellers.

/Be a personalised experience.

/Be an addiction.

/Take us beyond our planet.

/Make staying at home unbearable.


Guide to Flight

/The Journey

Kevin Pollard

/First Class Traveller

Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney

“Flight is freedom. The demise of t

he

Concord was only a temporary distraction,

as flight re-energises as a frontier of h

uman

liberty and emancipation, releasing

us from earth’s gravitational pull.”

Vince Pirrello, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Flight/ 064 – 065

THE JOURNEY: INNOVATIONS IN

TRAVELby Kevin Pollard

21st Century Guide to Flight/ 066 – 067

PlaneHistorically, long haul travel was expensive

so the majority of people could only afford to holiday within their own country or continent, and while the concept of the no-frills airline has been around a long time—the first low cost flights began with Pacific South West Airlines in 1949 and South West airlines in 1973—they have only really gained momentum in the last decade. New markets are now opening up in Asia, Australia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia following the lead of the Europeans and Americans, who for the last fifteen years have been able to travel relatively cheaply within their own continent due to strong currencies, central geographical position and deregulated airspace. Those in the Middle East have similar access to Europe, Africa and Asia and, political constraints notwithstanding, are travelling to them more regularly (Low cost carrier, n.d.).

The ‘£1 flight’ intra-European phenomenon has rendered obsolete the novelty and kudos once associated with flying. Europeans can all afford holidays abroad now—not just the basic package holidays but independent travel all over the world. Global air passenger numbers are nearing pre September 11 numbers and are set to overtake them soon (Masters, 2007). This is because there is no substitute for an aeroplane when quickly traversing an ocean or travelling over politically unstable territory.

The well-tramped $1.7 billion/year London–New York route is setting the bar for low cost travel (Masters, 2007). A recent ‘open skies’ agreement between the EU and North America has reduced the cost of trans-atlantic flights, and as a consequence airlines such as Zoom and Oasis have begun low cost flights from Europe to Canada and the US.

As of mid 2007, there is data to suggest that intra-European travel has been falling in favour of these longer haul trips, acknowledging the reduced cost of travelling further afield and the realisation that low cost hops within Europe are actually not as straight forward as they seem (World Airline News, 2001). For example, often travellers land at a secondary airport that is miles away from the city centre; transport to and from these provincial airports can be patchy and hard to organise independently; and finally once the cost of getting to and from the airport has been factored into the equation, it doesn’t seem like such a good deal.

Further up the ladder, a number of business and first-class only airlines touting affordable premium trans-atlantic services have sprung up to gain market share. While these airlines (such as EOS, MiMa, Silverjet, Maxjet) currently cater mainly to the corporate market, the leisure market is not far behind. Each of these airlines promises a better experience for a price. EOS and MiMa have only forty-eight seats, fully or almost fully reclinable beds and more personal in-seat services—the EOS website proudly points out that they designate one flight attendant to every eight passengers on their flights. MiMa’s (short for Milano-Manhattan) value offering is not an airline, but an exclusive club. Membership is by invitation only.

And these models are set to be refined further. In November 2006, Qatar Airways opened the world’s first premium class only terminal for wealthy travellers in Doha—more are sure to follow. After all, why mix with the riff-raff when you can breeze through security in minutes? The problem is that when everyone becomes a first-class traveller, the queues grow and the point of differentiation needs to be recreated.

Once the cost of private air travel reduces, will private jets and air taxis become mainstream? Air taxis are cheaper to run than mainline airlines as they can use smaller airports and require less people (The rise of the air taxi, 2007), but of course, this model isn’t sustainable once the number of people travelling this way significantly increases.

Already owning a private jet is not luxury enough these days. The ultimate is a jet with a bespoke interior suited to your every personal need. These are being designed by firms such as Design Q, who are currently designing interiors for Virgin, Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific, and Gulfstream, as well as numerous private clients. At the time of writing, the biggest gesture in this arena so far belongs to the anonymous buyer at the Paris Air Show in June 2007 who paid around £150 million for his own Airbus A380 for use as a private jet. These aircraft have 900 sqm cabin space and hold up to 840 people (Airbus super jumbo for private use, 2007). It will take a year to convert it to private use and one can only imagine the parties that will be held on it...

“If God had really intended men to fly, he’d make it easier to get to the airport.” George Winters

If we stop to imagine what travellers will encounter on future holidays, both near and distant, many questions arise. How do we decide where we will go? How will we get there? What will we do once we arrive? What will the holidays we choose to take tell others about who we are, both individually and collectively? Where is consideration for an over-used, under-resourced planet? And in this day and age, can we achieve as much by staying home? In this article we focus on the journey.

Examining the history of the holiday— from the early tourists who undertook ‘The Grand Tour’ from England to Europe1 (and the advent of the modern package holiday created by the original Thomas Cook in 1841), to the Virgin Galactic flights of this century — one sees that innovation has regularly paved the way for seismic shifts in the holiday experience. The invention and refinement of new forms of transport have continually opened up whole new worlds.


“The world is a book and those who do not travel see only a page.” St. Augustine

Entrepreneur Igor Pasternak is proposing the ‘Aeroscraft’. Essentially a flying ‘Freedom of the Seas’—though it only accommodates 250 passengers—it will have a one acre cabin complete with staterooms, restaurants and casinos and will be able to sail a range of several thousand miles. Pasternak expects to have a prototype built by 2010 (Tompkins, n.d.).

One of the arguments against this version of the future for mass air transit can be attributed to security concerns. The bigger the vessel, the tighter the security needs to be, and the greater the carnage when something goes wrong.

In the meantime, for the regular punter, intercontinental air travel will remain ever popular as evidenced by the entry into the market of the Airbus A380 superjumbo and the carbon-fibre Boeing Dreamliner, which already has deliveries sold out until 2014. A raft of new airports are being designed and constructed around the world to meet the growing demand of air passengers despite resistance from environmental groups.

Longer term, the current crop of aircraft may be succeeded by concepts such as the Flying Wing (stakeholders include Boeing, Northrop and others), in particular the Blended Wing Body version of the late 1920s idea (Robison & Rothman, 2002). It will allegedly be possible to carry up to 800 passengers with fuel burn up to twenty-seven per cent lower than its conventional Airbus A380 rival, and will only require three engines instead of four. Coupled with a twenty per cent better lift/drag capability, the concept, if built, will translate into phenomenal fuel savings (The blended wing body, 1999). The need for more efficient and greener versions of our current technology may provide the impetus for its development, although most of the funding to date comes from the military rather than commercial bodies. As a result, it may remain more suited to cargo and military use, especially as the design puts most passengers nowhere near a window.

TrainThe best alternative to air travel for densely

populated conjoined continents is the development of high speed rail networks. As a more sustainable mode of transport, it may remain immune to high fuel prices which will plague the no-frills airlines. While data varies, it is widely acknowledged that a train ride creates up to seventy per cent less CO2 emissions than a flight over a comparable distance. The rail networks are usually in good condition and normally take you straight to the city centre, making rail a more attractive proposition. Depending on the destination, the emissions for air travel versus train travel are between two to ten times higher (Rail 10 times better than air in London-Paris CO2 comparison, 2006). With the dedicated line between London and Paris now complete, hourly trains rush from city centre to city centre in 135 minutes, which has created an achievable three-and-a-half hour door to door trip. That is pretty hard to beat with any other form of transport unless you are living next to the runway at Heathrow.

Throughout the continent, plans are already being implemented to make European rail travel more consumer friendly, competing seriously with the no-frills airline market share, by offering wi-fi and power access through all trains, and allowing tickets to be more flexible. However, other factors also need to be taken into consideration for increasing rail travel including loss of habitat for native species while laying down the rails, political conditions in the countries traversed and the extra management of slower travel i.e. more food required = more waste. This strategy is less suitable for less densely populated continents such as Australia and America, due the distances involved, and countries around the Pacific Rim which are quite fragmented and prone to natural disasters. However, if properly managed, the risks can be minimised: the only derailment of the Shinkansen Bullet Train in Japan occurred in 2004 during the Chuetsu earthquake. An early warning detection system triggered an emergency stop procedure, and consequently no one was hurt (Report on Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake, n.d.).

21st Century Guide to Flight/ 068 – 06921st Century Guide to Life


BoatPerhaps the holiday is not the destination

but the journey itself. Passenger cruise ships have been ploughing every sea and ocean for over a century and Royal Caribbean’s ‘Freedom of the Seas’ is the largest to date. More floating-city than boat, it can accommodate 4375 passengers on fifteen passenger decks and is served by over 1300 crew. It’s an energy behemoth that costs $1 million per day to run by consuming vast resources, among them 28 000 lbs of fuel per hour and 35 000 kg of ice per day. The Genesis class vessels, also owned by Royal Caribbean, which will be able to carry 5400 passengers, will surpass it in 2009. Vessels of this size have their own police force and suffer from the same ailments as land cities. The size of current and future vessels means that they have to become as self sufficient as possible, due to docking difficulties in many ports.

At the private end, large yacht ownership has ballooned in the last twenty years. Back in the late 80s, there were only around 300 yachts measuring 100 feet or more. Today there are believed to be more than 5000. The world’s most expensive yacht (as of 2007) has just started to be built by Fincantieri in Genoa for an anonymous Russian buyer, and predictably boasts extravagant facilities such as seven decks, two helicopter pads, bullet-proof glass, a missile detection system, an internal sea water swimming pool and storage for a submarine that can reach a depth of up to 300 feet (Pisa & Nikkah, 2007). Currently known only as Hull 6154 and costing an eye-watering £140 million, it is due for completion in 2010 and will slot into the top of the ranks of giga-yachts, owned by the likes of Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, Paul Allen of Microsoft, Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai and Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of Harrods.

Where does it end? Are things just going to continue to get bigger and more lavish?

Where does it end? Are things just going to continue to get bigger and more lavish?



Why do we want to continue to push the boundaries? Because we want to succeed in an environment we are not supposed to.

SpaceWhile the realisation of a Star Wars-style Cloud

City—a floating city above the clouds with front row seats at every sunset, starry nights and the ever-changing topography of clouds just below—is a long way off, the possibility of a low-earth orbit hotel (400–500 miles above earth) is gaining momentum.

Without a doubt, the ultimate trip and logical progression from air travel is the final frontier of space. The allure of space is easy to explain. If you consider holidays as a differentiator or reflection of personal power and aspiration, then what can be more powerful than defying gravity and our own fragile physiology by getting closer to God in a low-earth orbit pressurised cocoon?

Several wealthy individuals have already spent around $20 million each to ride a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station for a couple of days. But it is beyond the reach of most people, and doesn’t have the mass appeal that ventures such as Virgin Galactic do.

Richard Branson of Virgin and Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites have unveiled the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital experience which promises in 2009 the ultimate thrill of seven minutes of weightlessness for a cool $200 000 (Virgin Galactic, 2007). The whole flight lasts two-and-a-half hours, (which equates to about $22/second not including the three days pre-flight training on Branson’s private Necker Island).

In addition to Virgin, several international companies have been in the race to establish commercial space travel and tourism such as low-earth orbit hotels. One such company is the Space Island Group in California, USA. Their concept envisions re-use of the existing Space Shuttle external tank modules that are used to hold the fuel and are normally jettisoned near the mesosphere. Once in place, the low-earth orbit station would become a research centre, education facility and hotel (Space Island Group, n.d.). But travelling at 17 000 mph orbiting the earth every ninety minutes, and with a station rotation rate of four times per minute, guests would need intense training to be able to cope with the conditions. In such extreme environments there is no margin for error.

Why do we want to continue to push the boundaries? Because we want to succeed in an environment we are not supposed to. True luxury is to be able to experience or possess that which others, and even ourselves, shouldn’t really be able to: from shopping at Harrods at 3 am to even just being able to have some quiet time alone without any distractions. This living-beyond-the-rules and the daily routine is a very powerful motivator to the human psyche.

In the early days of these new industries, the bragging rights associated with a trip of this type will have mileage for months if not years—which is no mean feat in an ever more sophisticated and wired world. Perhaps it is analogous to the quest by man to continue to try and break his own sporting records.



by Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney

FirstClass Traveller

Sydney International Airport First Lounge, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot


For some, low cost fares leave extra cash to splash out on expensive hotels, while for others first class aircraft cabins and lounges are the new hotels.

First Lounge, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot


Figure 1. UNWTO’s Tourism 2020 Vision forecasts that international arrivals are expected to reach nearly 1.6 billion by the year 2020. Of these worldwide arrivals in 2020, 1.2 billion will be intraregional and 378 million will be long-haul travellers. Reproduced from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.©

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According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, there will be 1.6 billion airline trips made by the year 2020, almost double that of current levels (Figure 1) (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, n.d.). Although the evolution of tourism in the last few years has been irregular, this long-term vision confirms that travel has become such an integral part of people’s lives that it is not likely to be sacrificed for whatever reason, despite the fact that sustainability issues, soaring oil costs, security and medical threats have changed the face of travel forever.

At the luxury end of the travel market, there is huge growth across all regions, especially developing markets such as India, Russia and China (Key to future of luxury travel is sustainable responsible tourism, n.d.). However, in developed countries1 the visible materialism that typified the 1980s and early 1990s has been replaced by a trend towards less conspicuous consumption, shifting from an object-driven society to one that is experience-driven. In part this is because traditional luxury products have become more widely accessible to consumers and in part as the cost of travel continues to decline and people have more money to spend what was once exotic is now considered ordinary.

Market growthThe rise of online booking has accelerated

the growth of low-cost airlines, allowing consumers to search for the cheapest deals. As a result there has been increased accessibility for travel in the developed world and international travel is no longer seen as a luxury. This has already resulted in, and will continue to stimulate, increased individual travel both among young people and the growing numbers of ageing baby boomers who have more disposable wealth and time on their hands. For some, low cost fares leave extra cash to splash out on expensive hotels, while for others first class aircraft cabins and lounges are the new hotels.

Looking forward through the current decade, an international Luxury Alliance round table cites growth destinations for luxury travel from all five continents across the globe, with the lure of China as a luxury travel destination for both leisure and business continuing to grow and increased visitor numbers boosting significant development over coming years.

The emerging destinations in Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East are key growth drivers for travel by 2020. Stimulating growth in this market is the shifting of economic power to Asia. The region will also become the new leader in terms of travel and tourism outperforming all other regions of the world, in terms of both inbound and outbound growth (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, n.d.).

These destinations will boost new and more frequent travel rather than detract from established patterns, with tried and tested urban favourites (like London and Paris) holding their own, and celebrated resort areas in Italy and the South of France remaining forever fashionable (Luxury Alliance, 2006).

The rise of online booking has accelerated the growth of low-cost airlines, allowing consumers to search for the cheapest deals. As a result there has been increased accessibility for travel in the developed world and international travel is no longer seen as a luxury.


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Figure 2. Size and distribution of world population aged sixty years or over by groups of countries, 1950, 1975, 2005, 2025, 2050. The graph shows estimates (until 2005) and medium-variant projections (after 2005. Percentages are shown inside the bars. (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, n.d.).©

Developing countries

Economies in transition

Developed countries

WellnessThe more life speeds up, the more people

want to step off the treadmill to relax and re-energise. Wellness travel has emerged as an important growth market for luxury travel over the past decade, especially for mature travellers. Themes that range from detox to deep relaxation, from spa to spiritualism, have taken the spa concept far beyond beauty and pampering. The health and medical focus has expanded to include on-site physical check-ups, alternative medical treatments such as homeopathy and naturopathy, even cosmetic surgery if desired, all rapidly growing in popularity. Also expanding is the overall size of spas, as the roster of services grows progressively more complex and the pursuit of stress relief boosts the need for more individual treatment rooms (Future Foundation, n.d.).

This trend has had a strong impact on domestic and commercial interior design with bathrooms turning into spa havens and spas now included as part of the pre/post flight experience.

In Europe, Asia and the US, rising incomes and aspirations could prompt the emergence of a new, integrated low cost luxury airline model, creating a luxury version of a no-frills airline offer to appeal to the mass affluent audience. This type of service could combine lower airfares with optional paid for extras such as chauffeured airport pick-ups, in-flight entertainment, fast-track check-in and a range of food options, to make the travel experience more luxurious and streamlined.

Quality offeringsFor the wealthy, the focus is now on the

pursuit of authentic and exotic experiences and services, rather than scarcely available, high value goods. As luxury is no longer purely about price, consumers will make purchasing decisions based on emotional not financial value (prioritising intangibles such as time and experience) and will increasingly incorporate ‘extreme’ experiences into a luxury holiday (Future Foundation, n.d.). For example, they may choose to spend money on business class flights (pampering), but choose a relatively low-cost activity such as group trekking in the jungle, or camping in the desert in less than luxurious surroundings (personal development/experience) (Future Foundation, n.d.).

In design, the focus on emotionally engaging architecture and interior design is lifting the travel experience out of the ordinary. At the new flagship Qantas First Lounge at Sydney International Airport (see p. 83), the design by Marc Newson in collaboration with associate architect Sebastien Segers and Woods Bagot, is extravagant but also intimate and personal, like a home away from home, complete with spa and library. Once onboard there are designer pyjamas from Akira Isagawa or Collette Dinnigan, French skincare products from Payot, and an eight-course tasting menu to complete the experience.

Grey expectationsOne of the most significant implications of

demographic change in the twenty-first century is the ageing of the world’s population. Global population ageing is unprecedented as life expectancy rates rise and birth rates fall (Figure 2). A process without historical parallel, the number of older persons is expected to exceed the number of children for the first time in 2047 (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, n.d.).

In Europe, the US and Australia, older consumers or empty nesters are the highest spenders on tourism and travel, while in India and the Middle East this group is the 45–58 year olds (Basu, 2003). Increasingly older consumers in developed countries are wealthier and healthier, which means they have rising expectations about how to spend their retirement. If changing attitudes to individualism and experience are considered alongside improving health and wealth, older people represent a dynamic market of active, adventurous, affluent consumers, for whom travel is seen as an integral part of a fulfilling retirement.

An analysis of UK consumer attitudes to leisure and hobbies has identified that older, middle class empty nesters have the largest range of leisure activities that they are passionate about and therefore highly involved in (Future Foundation, n.d.). Travel involving a culturally enriching element, whether this involves luxury activities, adventure or more community based educational experiences, will be the growth areas in this market (A world travel trends report, 2007).

SustainabilityHand-in-hand with the shift towards

inconspicuous consumption is a greater awareness of issues such as sustainable development, eco-tourism and ethical consumption. Air travel will continue to be one of the most controversial aspects of the sustainability equation, however, at the German Centre for Air and Space Travel (the German equivalent of NASA) technological advances have resulted in a seventy per cent reduction in fuel consumption per passenger-km since 1960 and there could be a further 15–20% reduction between now and 2010, and 30–35% by 2020, if new technologies result in further expected efficiencies (A world travel trends report, 2007).

Across Europe, twenty-five per cent of consumers claim to have made an ethical purchase in the last year, and a similar proportion claim to have deliberately avoided buying from particular companies because of their policies on trade, labour, human rights or the environment (Future Foundation, n.d.).

A growing number of luxury travel companies are making progress in the realms of responsible tourism, be it through carbon offsetting policies or other environmental projects. An international Luxury Alliance survey indicates travellers are willing to spend 20–25% more on a trip if its design supports environmental conservation (Luxury Alliance, 2006).

High end travel in the twenty-first century has a wider reach than ever before, but rather than being a sign of elitism, the luxury arena has taken on a new persona of where less is more and people are using their knowledge to seek out the best rather than the most expensive.

Qantas First Lounge. Design collaboration team: Marc Newson, Sebastian Segers and Woods Bagot


ZoningThe layout of the space is a distinctive feature

which sets the design of the Qantas First Lounge apart from other venues. The ten distinct bays are connected by an arcing 90 metre, long corridor which reveals ten private and intimate zones as the customer moves through the space. These zones include dining and bar areas, touchdown work areas, entertainment zones, a library and private suites for meeting or business use.

Bay dividersThe timber portals are constructed out of

plywood frames which lock and screw in together to create a self supporting structure. Clad in European Oak timber veneer, these sculptural dividers are open in the centre, allowing glimpses of spaces beyond yet restricting views of others seated in adjacent zones.

ArrivalA vertical garden in the arrival area designed

by international botanist Patrick Blanc creates a tranquil transition from airport environment to lounge experience. The gardens sweep around to the escalators drawing the customer through and up into the open space of the lounge to be greeted at the reception desk.

Beverage bar and diningGuests may choose to dine in the restaurant

area or take a seat at the marble bar and watch the chefs at work, absorbing the theatre of the open kitchen.

The marble cladding to the floors and walls was pre-cut in Furrer Italy to match the arc of the building. All the corners are curved and were hand-crafted in Italy from marble blocks, spaced to suit the arc of the building and give the appearance of a solid element.

Day spaThe long arcing walkway leads people

through to the spa where a transition in ambience and function is created by the scale of the space and a change in materials and lighting. A range of complimentary treatments are provided against a beautiful backdrop of vertical gardens which create a feeling of welcome respite.

LibraryGaining knowledge is a big part of travel,

and an enticing feature of the lounge is the library, stocked with a selection of magazines, newspapers, books and games. The brown leather tiles contrast with the Carrara marble to create a softer finish and a transitional experience from one zone to another.

Qantas First LoungeSydney International AirportThe new flagship Qantas First Lounges in

Sydney and Melbourne set an international benchmark in lounge design with the highest levels of comfort, service and luxury. Led by the vision of internationally renowned Australian designer, Marc Newson in collaboration with associate architect Sebastien Segers and Woods Bagot, the Qantas First Lounge is part of a progressive luxury product upgrade being rolled out in anticipation of the airline’s Airbus A380 fleet being delivered from 2008.

Located on level four of the Sydney International Terminal, the aeronautically inspired base building designed by Woods Bagot was specifically designed to accommodate the larger of the two lounges with the floor plate, structure and facade detail influenced by the lounge design. The end result provides Qantas First customers with an abundance of natural light and 180 degree panoramic views overlooking the airline’s boarding gates and to the city beyond. The radial shape of the building lends itself to the creation of a space which is distinctive, yet private and intimate. A key feature of the interior design was the creation of zones including lounge areas, a day spa, a restaurant and library, which would appeal to the range of customer needs—rejuvenation, relaxation, entertainment and business.

The palette and detail principles were set very early in the concept design. These principles allowed the design to develop and evolve within strict parameters ensuring the design concept remained strong and in line with the Qantas brand guidelines. Each of the zones reflect a distinctive ambience which is unified by the warm and neutral palette of natural materials and shades of red, brown and aubergine— all signifying solid quality and a mood of calm. High quality materials, products and finishes from manufacturers such as Furrer, Capellini, Poltrona Frau, and Unifor further reinforce the statement of luxury.

Opposite page Qantas First Lounge21st Century Guide to Life

Restaurant, Qantas First Lounge



Vertical gardens, Arrival Area, Qantas First Lounge Library, Qantas First Lounge

/Urban Life… Coming Soon

Richard Marshall

/The Branded In-Between

Martha Schwartz & Heather Ring

/Growing Pains

Stuart Uren

/Society’s Double Helix

David Thorpe & JC Herz


Guide toCities

Tomorrow’s city means:

/ More than half the world’s population living in cities.

/A size of emerging developments never seen

before.

/Population densities far greater than the established

metropolises of London and New York.

/A mix of urban and rural is creating a new

form of ‘urbanscape’.

/Homogenisation on a global scale with the risk

of becoming indistinguishable.

/An opportunity for place-making in the public rea

lm

and interstitial spaces betw

een the buildings.

/Considering not only the environment

but culture and community.

/Returning the streets to the public.

/Competition for global attention and uniqueness.

“Never before in human history h

ave we been

faced with urban situations the likes of which

we will see over the next twenty-five years.”

Richard Marshall, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Cities/ 093 – 09321st Century Guide to Cities/ 092 – 09321st Century Guide to Life

URBAN LIFE... COMING SOON by Richard Marshall

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Cities/ 094 – 095

We are in the business of building cities. Sometimes we work building by building and sometimes by large swaths of city. Woods Bagot is at the forefront of defining the future of urban environments and being a globally based design studio we oversee this from a very interesting perspective.

21st Century Guide to Cities/ 096 – 09721st Century Guide to Life

Tokyo Hong KongShanghai New York London

people per hectare

people per hectare

people per hectare

24 126 10people per hectare

6people per hectare

355We are simultaneously working on projects in very mature urban locations like London and Sydney and at the same time emerging urban locations like Dubai and Beijing. Our urban design practice is at any given time engaged on work that ranges from a hectare in the outskirts of suburban Sydney to projects in Dubai that accommodate millions of square feet of commercial space and house populations at scales that recall Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine. Large size, both in terms of urban agglomerations and also the size of architectural projects, is clearly part of the contemporary experience of our practice. This raises a series of interesting issues.

One fundamental issue is that the size of some of our projects challenges the very foundation of our planning and urban design disciplines. Urban design is driven by the desire to make places, towards community-oriented developments, towards human-scaled environments. Yet many of the projects we are asked to undertake in the Middle East or in Asia are of such a size that these foundational elements of urban design are challenged. The reasons for this are numerous, but increasingly it appears that the sheer size and the speed of change of these emerging urban locations forces a radical rethink in the foundational elements of urban design. This warrants immediate attention for the simple reason that in the next fifty years the urban experience of the majority of the world’s population will be living in conditions more like the emerging urban locations than the mature ones.

Never before in human history have we been faced with urban situations the likes of which we will see over the next twenty-five years. New urban forms are emerging in cities such as Bangkok, Beijing, Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka, Dubai, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Tianjin and Tokyo. Once thought of as distant and exotic locations, these dynamic urban centres provide us with a glimpse of the future of human habitation—of new urban lifestyles. Interestingly, these situations have for the most part been off the radar of European and American urban scholars.

Writing about New York, Koolhaas states that the Metropolis ‘… annuls the previous history of architecture’ generating its own urbanism with ‘… its own theorems, laws, methods, breakthroughs and achievements that has largely remained outside the vision of official architecture and criticism’ (Koolhaas, 1978, p. 123). Could the urban situations of these emerging cities likewise annul the previous history of architecture?

At stake is the very notion of the city, how it works, and the kind of urbanities it is capable of supporting. Many of these emerging urban locations have population densities unimaginable in mature urban locations. Hong Kong is the best example—perhaps the most extreme—of the 1000 square kilometres that constitute Hong Kong and the New Territories, the urbanised portion is 200 square kilometres. With an estimated population of 7.1 million people (2000), this equates to a density of 355 people per hectare in the urbanised area.

Compare this to Tokyo, twenty-four people per hectare; Shanghai, 126 people per hectare; New York, six people per hectare; and, London, ten people per hectare. Density has become one of the defining aspects of many emerging cities and is responsible for a great deal of the particularity of urban culture in these locations.

Urban design as an academic and professional undertaking has had little time to absorb the realities of these emerging situations. It has become apparent that various definitions need to be repositioned in light of these emerging situations. The very concept of what is urban has to be reconceptualised. The historical model of an expanding urban core encroaching outwards and consuming rural hinterland has given way to a patchwork pattern of urban fragments mixed with rural fragments. This patchwork is for the most part uneven, driven by imbalances in the provision of urban infrastructure. The neat demarcations between city and country no longer exist and instead we are left with a thick band of ambiguous urban fuzziness that denotes the transition from one to another— neither wholly urban nor wholly rural, but something new entirely—an urbanscape.

One sees this in cities like Bangkok and Dubai where the urban grain resembles a kind of patchwork quilt of various fragments of city stuff but organised in peculiar ways without apparent order. Often very dense fragments exist immediately next to completely empty fragments with no clear sense of urban hierarchy or form or direction. In such environments we find it very hard to navigate. We have moved from an understanding of the city as an object in a field to a new idea of the city as the field. This new field is not uniform. It contains spaces and objects that are ordinary, as well as spaces and objects that are extraordinary, but without any sense that the one is more important than the other and instead seem to occur in random combination — a kind of uniform sameness: no order, hierarchy, definition or directionality.

Urban design as a rational ordering practice finds no role here. Strategic interventions into the field will be the only other course of action. What this means for our conceptual understanding of the city is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the emerging urban fields force us to negotiate new ways of understanding urbanism and its potential.

The history of planning and urban design has been about the ordering of urban environments. The emerging urban locations show the futility of this pursuit. But there is still hope! In his conclusion to Cities and Civilization, Sir Peter Hall (1998) writes that the greatest cities have never been ‘earthly utopias’, but rather:

… places of stress and conflict and sometimes actual misery … places where the blood pumps through the bodies of the people and through the streets on which they walk; messy places, sordid places sometimes, but places nevertheless superbly worth living in… (Hall, 1998, p. 989).

This, above all else, is what we aspire to.

Density has become one of the defining aspects of many emerging cities and is responsible

for a great deal of the particularity of urban culture in these locations.


by Martha Schwartz & Heather Ring

Mesa Arts Center, Arizona

The BrandedIn–Between


Cities look to architects and developers to construct iconic buildings that will define their skyline. And while these buildings may act like beacons, imaging cities from afar, they do little to shape experience at the human scale. At the street and commerce level, corporate chains have branded their facades with a repetition of window treatments, colour palettes and logos. These graphic identities are reproduced in every store front, on every demographically targeted block, in cities throughout the world.

While these signature buildings may rise with impressive characters, their power is undermined by the highly standardised visual experience of the street. There’s a certain déjà vu that comes with travelling between cities these days. As personal identities become all the more reinforced by brands and co-modified desires, dislocation comes not through a shift in geographies, but through separation from the brands that define us. In foreign cities, we now step with guilty relief into Starbucks for our preferred flavour of specialty coffee, and feel comforted by the brand recognition that expresses itself in colours, logos and the fabric on the chairs.

In this globalised economy, routines never require a break. Turn on your laptop, flip open your mobile phone, drink your coffee and transport without ever disconnecting your media-feed. The dislocation of walking with a mobile phone enables our bodies to inhabit a physical space without a mental presence. Through these technological appendages, we move through cities by way of jump-cut animation. We drift between places in our own plugged-in worlds, and only awaken as we enter each building and momentarily pull out the ear-buds on our iPods, registering our discomfort with our environments and our allegiance only to brands.

Between the inherent placelessness of standardised and often substandard commercial facades and the growing dislocation of body/space relationships, it becomes evident that there is one last hope for place-making in cities: the public realm. It’s the space between these buildings, between the facades, that can awaken people to their surroundings and connect them to their cities. By producing public spaces that enable people to feel the direct connection of their bodies in relation to their environments, we engage a society that feels more accountable and implicated in the future of their cities and the world at large.

It’s not the buildings that matter but the spaces around them: Planners, developers and architects alike are waking up

to the idea that it’s the public realm that really makes a place special. Why has it taken so long to make

this realisation? What are the secrets of success for designing public realm?

Jacob Javits Plaza, New York


The public realm reaches beyond dedicated spaces such as

signature parks and plazas to encompass all that lies in-between: from traffic intersections to

highway medians and parking lots. These often overlooked spaces are, at worst, interstitial,

and at best, the threads that weave a city together. Their treatment (or neglect) characterises our

cultural landscape. And it is within these spaces that a city can undergo its own form of branding.

By creating a unique visual and spatial language, a city can carve out an identity from interstitial spaces. When imbued with character and nuance, and consideration of the formal aspects of space (proportion, space, attitude,

and orientation), these places become the setting for chance encounters and self-expression,

the backdrop for romance, nostalgia and inspiration.




Grand Canal Square, Dublin

21st Century Guide to Cities/ 106 – 107

Art provokes us to ask questions and engage one another

in dialogue and exchange in search of a common ground. Art heightens our emotions,

strengthens our identities and puts us in touch with our humanity. When art

is expressed at the scale of the urban landscape, then, the whole of the city becomes the

platform for enrichment and connectivity.

Cities are beginning to realise that to compete for people, retain their creative communities, attract tourists and promote civic pride, they need to redefine and update the public realm, drawing out visual qualities that hold cultural resonance and foster collectivity. With so many competing attitudes about the role of public space in a metropolitan city, we believe it is necessary to work closely with the civic body to develop a unified vision as quickly as possible in the process, to minimise compromise of the aesthetics, sustainability, accessibility or cultural meaning of the cityscape. We take a collaborative approach with our clients, the users, and administrators, pairing the local community with an international vision, to translate and make legible the unique history and physical characteristics of the city into a visual and spatial language that can be collectively spoken and expressed to the world.

Discussions of sustainable building are still, for the most part, limited to ideas about environmental construction standards and buildings. But we need to consider a more holistic view and address the ways our public spaces can make cities culturally sustainable, in terms of economics, society, aesthetics and place-making. A disconnected society in a placeless world will reinforce behaviours that waste our resources and disregard our planet. We have the responsibility to create enduring spaces that awaken the senses and help nurture a collective consciousness. It is only by reviving the local and maximising the potential of a place that we can create positive connections between people, urban communities and the physical world. What connects people emotionally to a site are the expressions of meaning, aesthetics, beauty and culture, through visual, spatial and sensory design. Only through addressing these aspects of cultural sustainability can we inspire people to value and protect the public realm.

Beyond the visual, spatial, and emotional layers, a place must address the temporal as well—enlivening the day, the year, the decade into new generations. While a site should function as a backdrop, allowing for a multitude of interactions at different scales, it must also carry a strong enough identity to shape experiences and memories. A place is something that endures, synthesising its past as it records new histories. A day is an event, mobilising communities to come together through common ground and open dialogue: debates, parades, happenings, celebrations, performances, ceremonies, and festivals. Events are forces of change, and though they last only moments, their after lives are vital to a site’s identity.

A year is a rhythm, as overlapping communities coexist, maintain and utilise the space: workers lunching, tourists shopping, children playing, teenagers hanging, couples embracing. These small habitations collectively energise the space. A decade is a trend, a shift in attitudes, values, and tastes. While fashion and branding shift with time, the public realm needs to provide spaces that are resilient to change, without losing their sense of place. These spaces need to be adaptable to the flows of the city, reconfigured transport, shifting communities, densities and adjacencies. Place-making in the public realm must carry through events, rhythms and shifting trends to provide for a sustainable future of our cities.

The branded street-level of buildings will repeat itself in block after block, city after targeted city. We must embed these buildings within landscapes that carry a powerful sense of identity, locality and place. The technology, the commerce, the building interiors are now the transport, the dark subway ride, the no-man’s land, the branded in-between. The destination is now the public realm: the public realm is the place to be.

21st Century Guide to Life Grand Canal Square, Dublin

by Stuart Uren


To try to plan a city for this sort of growth is difficult—let’s face it, it’s never been done before.

Experiencing Dubai at ground level, one quickly gets a sense of a lack of control. A city showing the signs of strain—stretching itself to the limit, perhaps beyond, in attempt to maintain development rate to keep pace with rapid population growth. Dubai will grow— and grow fast!

Fuelled by legislation of freehold ownership of land and property for expatriate residents, over 165 billion dirhams (US$45 billion) has been invested in Dubai’s real estate sector resulting in some 20 000 residential buildings being constructed over the past five years. Supply of construction material cannot keep up—there are concrete, steel and glazing shortages with some buildings near completion to fifty and sixty storeys, without facade cladding.

Buildings continue to be constructed in their hundreds, as are the roads, interchanges and bridges and rail lines that lead to them, the cables and pipes in the ground that connect and service them, and the irrigation and landscaping that finishes them. Sequencing all this work in the right order is easier said than done. Authorities with jurisdiction over all this work are creaking under the strain of an unprecedented volume of construction work—massive expansion that presents serious challenges.

Most obvious is the haemorrhaging road infrastructure. Unavoidable traffic congestion regularly provides long delays—huge stretches of freeway traffic reduced to walking pace for an hour. While on the whole the quality of the roads is excellent, the ability to upgrade capacity at the rate of new vehicles using them is impossible. Massive quantities of materials are being shifted throughout Dubai every day on heavy vehicles which, when blended with domestic commuter traffic attempting to squeeze in between, can have horrific results. Dubai is a motor city—the stifling summer heat combined with poor pedestrian domain and poor public transport to date has developed a culture of reliance on the car. Up till now the motor car has dominated Dubai planning and the public realm is generally a sad reflection of that.

Dubai is largely being developed in large patches. Huge parcels of land are allocated or purchased by mega developers, the likes of Emaar, Nakheel and Sama Dubai, who manage the design, construction and sale of monster mixed use developments, usually containing a cocktail of residential, retail, workplace, and hospitality and entertainment amenities.

There is planning at a micro, site and project level but not in the context of ‘whole of city’ plan. No one seems to really know what form Dubai as a city is going to have.

As the mega mixed use developments of Dubai are being designed, built and occupied, without a ‘whole of city plan’, they are unable to anticipate the nature of their neighbours, their context. Each development is planned and implemented as an island.

Cluster developments attracting similar and related businesses to create centres of excellence are common in Dubai. While the idea is modern, their names lack innovation: Healthcare City, Media City, Academic City, Internet City, Maritime City to name a few. Combined with residential and community retail, these developments are primarily workplace focused.

With so much property being developed simultaneously, developers desperately seek ways to be noticed in the crowd. The need to distinguish each project from the next drives developers to the extremes. Each new development grapples with which ‘world’s first’, ‘world’s best’ or ‘world’s biggest’ attraction will appeal to the market. The results are extraordinary, ranging from the ingenious to the downright cheesy.

Hospitality, leisure and entertainment attraction based mega-developments also thrive. For example, Dubailand is a vast inland area being developed as a series of projects that are attraction based. While Woods Bagot has masterplanned Al Barari (botanical and nature themed) and Al Kaheel (equestrian themed), both are relatively reserved in comparison to other schemes—City of Arabia (including dinosaur theme park), Snowdome (winter wonderland theme), Falcon City (built wonders of the world theme) and Bawadi (Las Vegas-style thirty-one hotel strip theme).

In the absence of an overall cohesive vision these massive mixed use developments compete to provide the New Dubai—stretching, pulling eroding any sense of the heart of the city with little regard for: neighbour or context; for the quality of place; its contribution toward the building of a cohesive city; or its long lasting effects.

Dubai is one of the fastest growing cities on earth. According to the Dubai Municipality’s Statistics Centre, the emirate’s population increased in the order of 290 000 in 2006. This rate of population growth equates to 800 people arriving every day — to stay. The design and construction of the built environment to meet this growth requires an unprecedented effort. It certainly feels as though every square inch of Dubai is under construction simultaneously. So while developments are being built at a furious pace, to what degree has the shape, form and nature of the city been considered and planned?



The challenge is how all these developments complement and connect with each other to form a cohesive city instead of a collection of competing developments.

Recent construction commencement of the metropolitan rail system is a positive move. Fortunately the linear pattern of development of Dubai along the coast and a series of roads parallel to it will facilitate relatively straight forward insertion of an effective rail network. This sort of public infrastructure that connects the city and its mega developments together may spell problems for some developments that do not or cannot connect. Achieving pedestrian access to the stations is vital to its success, but will provide a big challenge. Once operational, the rail stations will generate nodes of value and density and start to change the property value system. Properties within walking distance of rail Metro stations will rise in value.

With increasing parking fees, tolls on freeways combined with the debilitating heat in summer, many will be forced onto public transport. A deliberate and good change if the public transport is economical, effective and efficient. New bridges crossing the Creek are already beginning to help free up massive traffic bottlenecks.

While old cities work to adapt to new lifestyles within their existing form and ageing infrastructure, Dubai’s clean slate basis for a new city should position it well ahead of the competition. While Dubai has limited opportunity to provide genuine old world charm, with a little more effort it can create a better outdoor amenity and pedestrian friendly public domain.

As the last remaining land bank in the emirate of Dubai is being designed and developed we will soon see whether the opportunity to have a clear plan for the form of the city is a missed one or not. The degree to which this patchwork approach is successful, either as one city or a series of cities, will be tested in the very near future.

On the other hand, massive mixed use developments do offer, in a compact setting, a diversity and texture of activity—somewhere where the family can live, visitors can stay, and mum and dad can work, socialise, shop and entertain the kids. The developments diversify developers risk and have lifestyle covered, sometimes literally, all conveniently provided in air-conditioned comfort. When well designed they generate a strong community identity and integrate public and private activities.

Dubai Urban Planning Committee’s recent commitment to develop an Urban Development Framework for the emirate is a positive recognition of the need for a holistic plan. To what degree it can have a substantial effect after so much development is already in place is questionable.

Public protest to new development seems to be a new phenomenon in Dubai. The lack of dependence on public consultation and support is one of the reasons development has, and is, happening so fast. However this trend will become increasingly difficult with greater individual property ownership by people of diverse nationalities.

Can the development of Dubai as a patchwork of massive mixed use developments, all constructed over a period of two decades, provide a city to match the lifestyle of the twenty-first century? I think it can—maybe more by luck than by design. The mixture of cluster and attraction themed developments providing combinations of the suburban village, the district centre and the vertical city and sometimes all three, are resulting in a diversity of quality, product and lifestyle across the city.

Can the development of Dubai as a patchwork of massive mixed use developments, all constructed over a period of two decades, provide a city to match the lifestyle of the twenty-first century?


by David Thorpe & JC Herz

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Cities/ 116 –117

In March 2003, fifty New York City subway cars were dropped off a barge, fourteen miles

off the coast of Virginia Beach.

Of course, this reveals far more about the ideological proclivities of the conversants than it does about the strengths and liabilities of flat or tiered organisational structures. Without its ideological scaffolding, this discourse implodes, because careful examination of the ‘networks good – hierarchies bad’ dialectic reveals that the most successful network phenomena usually leverage highly centralised infrastructure or benefit from hierarchical decision-making somewhere along the line. Conversely, effective large-scale hierarchies are smart enough to leave space for networked interaction to meet unexpected needs and new opportunities.

In reality, the robustness and success of a system depends on the presence and effectiveness of both hierarchies and networks, and the interplay between them. Often, the liabilities and limitations of one kind of structure can only be addressed by leveraging the other. Hype and spin notwithstanding, transformative technologies have a knack for hybridising both centralised and distributed mechanisms of interaction and exchange. Likewise, organisations, cities and cultures thrive through time and circumstances. In the absence of this dynamic tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces, the resulting system leans either towards over-controlled sterility or towards entropic dissipation of energy and resources.

A historical case in point is Paris. When Louis Napoleon instructed Baron Haussmann to rebuild Paris his mind was on securing the military security of the state. Louis was acutely aware of the fragility of power and the volatility of the mob. As a returned exile newly minted as Napoleon III, his own success had depended on it. In the twenty-five years before Louis’ coup d’etat in 1851 the barricades had gone up nine times in the medieval streets of Paris, a city galvanised by revolution in 1789, 1830 and 1848(Scott, 1998).1

Haussmann’s task was to make legible and manageable ‘… the inextricable network of narrow and tortuous public ways, alleys, and dead-ends, where a nomadic population without any real ties to the land (property) and without any effective surveillance, grows at prodigious speed’ (Haussman cited in Scott, 1998, p. 61).

Having outlived their useful lives beneath the streets of Manhattan, the old Redbird train cars had been stripped of their doors and windows, wires and chassis, all the better to serve out their watery afterlives as an artificial reef (Associated Press, 2003). Once the bane of frazzled rush hour commuters, the old subway cars provide friendlier environs for blue mussels, white perch and black sea bass. Svelte flounders and overbearing groupers have replaced the urban complement of starving artists and self-entitled bankers. The new habitat is at once industrial and organic. Once the product of top-down municipal bureaucracy, the train cars now function as the substrate for a meshed and interdependent ecosystem.

As technology has transformed business and civil society in parts of the world, it has become fashionable to discuss networks and hierarchies in Manichean terms, as opposing forces. This discourse, often reduced to caricature by management consultants and gurus, characterises hierarchies as sclerotic vestiges of the industrial era, useful for their original assembly line purpose to be sure, but now outmoded, a barrier to growth and innovation in the information age. Old, failing companies are cited as examples of why hierarchies are so last century.

Conversely, networks are described in glowing terms as the organisational structure of the future. Hip, young and nimble, networks are catnip to journalists (many of whom consider themselves small world mavens, even though they work for large hierarchical corporations). Buzzwords cluster around metaphors from nature, with everything small-scale, organic and ecological counterpoised against the monolithic cathedrals of large-scale enterprise.


In the absence of this symbiosis between hierarchical infrastructure and networked adaptation, the pathologies of both hierarchies and networks are more virulent and aggressive.

It was the largest urban renewal project in European history. Haussmann gave Paris a shape and spectacle. His purpose was to create a city more governable, prosperous and architecturally imposing: its simplification offered a synoptic view, wide boulevards interconnected with a series of squares and parks ensured rapid troop deployment and removed any advantage to a mob; the scale and grandeur of the buildings, their ornate surfaces were intended to impact the sensibilities and conduct of Parisians.

To balance all the considerations of his brief Haussmann had to focus on the people, to change their lot. Productivity and commercial success were wed with strategic and public health concerns.2 Breaking the densely packed working class areas improved the circulation of light, air and water as well as goods and labour and in doing so radically improved the well-being and health of the population.

Seen as the usher to la Belle Époque, the redesign was held up as the gold standard for the benefits of central planning. Proof of a singular vision to improve the lot of everyone, Haussmann had capably solved myriad problems presented by the form of the city—slums, congestion, disease and sedition—and, critically for the times, made vast improvements in human efficiency for an increasingly industrial world.

It is important to note, however, that for all the Belle Époque rhetoric of order and clarity, Haussmann’s plan did not obliterate the conditions that nurture and sustain vibrant urban life. While improving the centralised infrastructure, particularly with regard to public health, the plan left room for small scale, emergent uses of urban space, as well as the grand spectacles. It was this synthesis of centralised infrastructure and the decentralised knitting-together of communities around small scale social resources (cafés, bookshops, etc.) that accounts for Paris’ cultural vibrancy.

Interestingly, one of the city’s most centrally managed nineteenth infrastructure initiatives, the sewer system, has become an enabler of information networks in the twenty-first century. Telecommunications companies are threading fibre optic cable through a thousand miles of gothic, rat-infested tunnels instead of drilling into the streets, which would be prohibitively expensive. To encourage this mode of installation— which is a stinky job for the telecom companies but avoids right-of-way battles and jackhammers on the streets—the Mayor has cut telecom access fees by twenty-five per cent for the last 400 metres to the home. The goal is to hook up eighty per cent of Parisians to a high-speed fibre optic line by 2010 (Sovich, 2006).

While the prospect of ethereal electrons speeding through the dank depths of Parisian sewers is poetic, this development is only the most recent adaptation of distributed networks leveraging the Paris sanitation system. In World War II, Paris’ underground network of caves, quarries and sewers was “… used as a base of operations for the French resistance. Two years ago, police discovered and closed a still-operating movie theatre under the Seventh Arrondissement, complete with installed seats and a cocktail bar” (Sovich, 2006).

The intertwining of centralised and decentralised urban dynamics in Paris not only entwines the benefits of each, but also buffers against the liabilities of both. In the absence of this symbiosis between hierarchical infrastructure and networked adaptation, the pathologies of both hierarchies and networks are more virulent and aggressive. In Paris, the centralising principle of Corbusier’s La Ville Radieuse finds its purest expression in high-rise housing projects rife with violence, most notably during ethnically charged riots in 2005.3


Graffiti wall, Woods Bagot London office


Corbusier’s vision of top-down control as an urban planning principle reached its apotheosis not in the Parisian metropolis, but in the developing world, as new twentieth century countries aspired to the stature and prestige of industrial nations. In 1947, coming out of the chaos of Partition, Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru declared that he sought “… a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past … an expression of the nation’s faith in the future” (cited in PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2006, p. 12).4

Chandigarh would be that city,5 a symbolic statement from the new democratic country and a role model for urban dwellers as India transformed from a rural to a modern economy. When Nehru invited Le Corbusier to finish the plan for Chandigarh, it was a seemingly perfect complement of ideals.6 Le Corbusier had refined the principles of Haussmann to a sublimated art form, the city as cipher, as an abstracted force.

In 1952 the foundation stone of Chandigarh was laid and Le Corbusier’s Master Plan, an orderly orthogonal matrix of low rise cubic concrete forms, experiments in raw concrete and local brick, wide vistas and profuse greenery of groomed parks would grow in stark contrast to all other Indian towns. It was a city of absolutes to be protected by zoning and a sixteen kilometre moat, the Periphery Controlled Area, to protect the government buildings from the encroachment of unplanned construction. Le Corbusier penned an edict to “… enlighten the present and future citizens of Chandigarh about the basic concepts of planning of the city so that they become its guardians and save it from whims of individuals.”7

Chandigarh was the site of an ancient city which unlike many Indian towns had wide streets intersecting at right-angles, lined with neat, well-constructed buildings. Corbusier enhanced the scale and street vendors were banned from the city. The systematic regulation necessary to conform the city to its Plan8 created a blindness, an ignorance of context that failed to recognise the interstices than had held the ancient city together—the bazaar, the small-scale street trader, the hawker or the rehris (barrows) who made the street corners important meeting places (Sarin, 1977). The informal, the humanity, was bleached from the streets by their scale and enforced by regulations.

Following the principles of Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer’s plan for Brasilia was also designed to be a transforming physical environment. The conversation to relocate Brazil’s central government from Rio de Janeiro was first officially broached in the first republican constitution of 1891. The new capital would be a symbolic conquest of the interior; from this neutral position the capital would unify the country and aid in the development of the central region. As with Paris, concerns of domestic and national security could better be addressed by the new site. Brasilia was to be a visible statement entering Brazil into the international dialogue of power.

Perhaps due to its intended role as a unifier, the design sought little attribution to the past or the existing context of the society it would signify. It was about the future, and with mechanical efficiency Brasilia was built in forty-one months from 1956 to 1960. Brasilia was a city without crowds, without street corners and, in the early days, a city without traffic jams (caused in part by the deliberate lack of parking spaces which would later become problematic). In the summer months the administrative workforce it was designed to house and awe would be struck by stifling heat as they moved across the imposing distances from building to building. In a city devoid of spaces for human interactions, community became an expensive and scarce resource. Somewhere deep in the ideal lay the idea that when the concrete had dried these cities were finished works: immutable, to be preserved. Perhaps also in keeping with the times, as international institutions like the United Nations were established, there was a belief that hierarchy could protect society from itself.

The difficult and protracted struggles of these cities’ attempts to reconcile the ideals of the drawing board with life have been widely discussed and documented. In the absence of mechanisms for human networks to dynamically leverage urban infrastructure, individuals are left to navigate a landscape that cannot evolve. There are no gaps to serve as anchor points for community adaptation. Networked response to the city’s shortfalls can only occur at the urban margin. The results are seldom satisfactory, because the boundary of central planning is also the boundary of badly needed infrastructure.


Even as the austere planned centres of Brasilia and Chandigarh were built out, ‘invisible’ cities began to emerge at the edges, their weak signals growing louder and louder. The labourers who had come to build Brasilia, a population the city was not designed to accommodate, decided to stay. By 1980, seventy-five per cent of the population lived in settlements that hadn’t been planned—they were statistically outliers that didn’t register in the calculations for the megapolis—meanwhile, the planned city reached less than half its prescribed population. Chandigarh satellites Panchkula and Mohali grew, but without infrastructure. Their populations migrated into Chandigarh during the daytime seeking work, further unsettling Corbusier’s strict edicts about zones prescribed for labour, living and leisure.

While Norma Evenson (1966) was writing of her experience in Chandigarh, she observed that the inherent conflict between ideal and practice in essence created two modes of existence within and around the city, neither of them satisfactory. But there was also a third kind of Chandigarh quietly emerging out of sight, and not only in the form of the satellite towns beyond the controlled green zone that separated the government buildings of Le Corbusier from the rest of the land. In 1975, city inspectors stumbled across a bizarre sight in the middle of the forest, legions of sculpted men and women, imaginary creatures, bears and monkeys. Word spread and hundreds of people made their way through the controlled zone (A fantasy garden rises from the jungle, 2005).

For eighteen years, under cover of night, a roads inspector Nek Chand had spent his nights secretly crafting an enchanted kingdom from industrial waste and thrown-away items. The Chandigarh bureaucracy wanted it destroyed; Chand’s menagerie was not only illegal but an affront to the controlled zone and the Master Plan (A fantasy garden rises from the jungle, 2005). Finally, the Chandigarh Landscape Advisory Committee relented and they did so in a fascinating way. Not only would the sculptures be allowed to remain but Chand was given a salary so as he might concentrate full-time on his work, plus a workforce of fifty labourers to assist (Nek Chand: The untutored genius who built a paradise, n.d.). The secret grotto was inaugurated as The Rock Garden of Chandigarh which now stretches over twenty-five acres of several thousand sculptures set in large mosaic courtyards linked by walled paths and deep gorges (Nek Chand’s story, n.d.). Chand’s creation also combines huge buildings with a series of interlinking waterfalls.

The Rock Garden welcomes over 5000 visitors each day, some twelve million people since it opened to the public. It has become a bridge point between the informal and the official—a tendon connecting the skeleton of central authority to the networked muscle of its citizenry. The official sphere is rendered more vibrant, and the informal sphere less vulnerable. In this mediation between hierarchies and networked responses to them, it becomes possible for central authority to recognise the gaps in its vision, and for self-organising networks to transcend their limitations of scale.

While progressive urban planners decry the flaws of hierarchical control, it is important to understand the converse scenarios, where networked dynamics rule in the absence of central authority or effective top-down governance. For instance, Lagos is the seventeenth largest city in the world and the second largest in Africa following Cairo. The economic hub of Africa’s largest oil producer,9 Lagos was home to 10.8 million residents in 2005, with the population predicted to rise to 16 million by 2015 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/Population Division, 2005).

The reality of Lagos today is an amalgam of gated communities of extreme wealth and sprawling slums divided into small immobile clusters. There is no mass transit system;10 even if you have a car, the daily commute is routinely six hours long. Built on a swamp and a series of islands, the city is sinking. There is no proper sewage network; only 0.4% of the population has a toilet connected to a sewer system. Garbage dumps around the city steam with combustible natural gases. Drinking water is available for only a small portion of the city, and the power supply is more off than on.

This chaotic environment breeds networks and their particular ingenuity, but these adaptations spawn their own problems, with adverse consequences for the precarious lives of the city’s denizens. The absence of government services in most neighbourhoods forces self-sufficiency through illegal activity with local gangs providing security. Roughly sixty per cent of economic activity involves informal transactions. Recycling is big business. Garbage is ‘… the most widely available commodity in Lagos’ (Packer, 2006).

The lack of mobility means many people do not go shopping; rather, the shops come to them. You can buy everything you need from hawkers who patrol jammed lines of buses, cars and trucks. Goods still flow, but in limited bursts. People become sedentary. Many simply sleep where they work, locked in densely packed groups and tight networks of proximity. Social webs do not substitute for infrastructure that centralised hierarchies are geared to provide.

Social webs do not substitute for infrastructure that centralised hierarchies are geared to provide.


Networked response to the city’s shortfalls can only occur at the urban margin.

21st Century Guide to Cities/ 124 –12521st Century Guide to Life

In order to function at large scale (socially or geographically), networked structures need some junction point to hierarchical infrastructure.

In order to function at large scale (socially or geographically), networked structures need some junction point to hierarchical infrastructure. When such a junction can be established, however tenuously, new economies become possible. For example, mobile phone users in Africa can do peer to peer money transfers via SMS on their cell phones, because of a Safaricom/Vodaphone infrastructure called M-Pesa (M-Pesa, 2007). Essentially, the mobile phone number becomes a bank account, SMS serves as a transfer protocol between accounts, and the device plus an ID substitutes for an ATM card. In order to get cash out, the recipient goes to a local M-Pesa agent, typically a local retailer, shows their ID, enters a code, and receives the SMS transfer amount in cash.

Only nineteen per cent of adult Kenyans have bank accounts, but fifty-four per cent have access to a mobile phone (Rice, 2007). What mobile phone money transfers enable, for the thirty-five per cent with mobile access but no bank accounts, is a secure way to transfer small amounts of money between villages or cities that otherwise would have been entrusted to friends or family members (Rice, 2007). Which is to say, transactions that were once purely dependent on physical travel and the navigation of social networks, with all the risk and lag that entails, are now direct, secure, instantaneous, and not hindered by physical distance. In the first two weeks of service, M-Pesa cleared UK£60 000 worth of money transfers in Kenya—not a large amount of money in absolute terms, but a tide of transactions in tiny denominations. For the people doing these micro-transfers, as well as for the merchants making commissions as registered agents (including supermarkets and gas stations), this capability is a game changer—especially for far-flung family members sending remittances home with higher confidence that the money will be used for food or gasoline versus misused by the father-in-law who receives the cash from a visiting friend.

The constructive possibilities in this case only exist in the presence of both decentralised networks (e.g. dispersed families) and infrastructure that is centrally managed by a large-scale enterprise (in fact, both mobile telecom and financial transfer systems are closed, tightly controlled platforms).

So what does this mean for the relationship between technology and culture? At the very least, it means that our mythologies need to be examined, and particularly the heroic mythologies regarding networks as wholly separate and viable alternatives to hierarchical systems of any sort. It’s easy to see why these narratives are appealing, but if the goal is to build cities, organisations or inventions that bring real value to the world, then the crucial question is not how ‘webby’ or viral something is, but how it leverages both networks and centralised systems for what each does best.

Peel back the mythology, and even the boastful avatars of the networked economy turn out to be smart synthesisers of centralised and decentralised dynamics. Google sorts and sifts the web by constructing incredibly powerful, concentrated (and energy intensive) server farms to crunch through massive amounts of data—the level of standardisation and regularity in those facilities rivals anything that oil refineries or agro-business has to offer. Open source software development has an open culture and a distributed developer community, but when you look at how few people actually control what goes into the baseline of Linux or Apache, it looks more like the Council on Foreign Relations or the jury committee of the Cannes Film Festival.

There are wonderful stories about new, ‘bubble up’ business models that are changing the dynamics of popular culture and commerce—websites like Threadless.com which only prints t-shirt designs that receive the community vote. This is a clever business model that takes just-in-time inventory to the logical extreme. It works because it decentralises marketing, but also because it can leverage top-down infrastructures for transportation of goods and payment processing.

Perhaps the best example is a city whose very purpose is to celebrate decentralised, free-blossoming networked culture in all its glory—Black Rock City, the once-a-year, week-long site of the Burning Man Festival. Over 35 000 people inhabit this temporary city, where commercial transactions, except for coffee purchases at the central latte tent, are banned. Drawing heavily from the populations of nearby San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Burning Man bristles with ad hoc assemblages of industrial parts, computer-controlled equipment, LED displays, and other post-modern bricolage. Psychedelic art cars zip across the playa, and elaborate theme camps are constructed by high-tech bohemians in various states of intoxication and undress.

For more than twenty years, the city has been reinstated, and its culture maintained by abiding to ten core principles: radical inclusion, a gift economy, de-commodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, participation, immediacy, leaving no trace (i.e. no environmental impact), and civic responsibility (10 Principles, 2007). It is in this last principle, and Burning Man’s implementation of it, that one sees an effective central authority and governing hierarchy providing necessary infrastructure, so that the anything-goes festival atmosphere doesn’t devolve into third world squalor, rampant health and safety hazards, and loss of personal security.

Burning Man runs a very tight ship in this regard—450 portable toilets throughout the city are serviced on a continuous and rotating basis, twenty-four hours a day. There is an emergency medical facility staffed twenty-four hours a day by doctors and EMT’s. While registered art cars are permitted by the Black Rock City department of motor vehicles, no other motorised vehicles are allowed to drive on the grounds. Black Rock Rangers, Burning Man’s pre-selected (but unpaid) security personnel, put a kinder and gentler face on policing by calming local disputes and serving as intermediaries between Burning Man denizens and the Nevada State Police, who generally take a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to non-violent hippies and their use of controlled substances.

Finally, when one looks at the underlying urban structure, the city plan of Burning Man, it is organised according to principles that would warm the cockles of Haussmann’s heart. Radial streets fan out from a central landmark, the Burning Man statue, providing visibility and orientation to desert flaneurs. A wide avenue runs from the statue down to the central camp with its clinic, latte vendor and security post—the Champs-Élysées of the city. Furthermore, Black Rock City’s underlying geometry, like Haussmann’s redesign of Paris, is strongly informed by security concerns. As explained by the city’s planning authority:

The pentagram that marks our city’s external boundary was dictated by (a) the need to minimize our footprint in the surrounding environment due to the concerns of other recreational land users, (b) the economic need to create one controllable entry point at which we could charge an entrance fee (sorely lacking until ‘97) and (c) the need to protect our community from the depredations of rogue vehicles. The most efficient and obvious solution was a circle, but that was unworkable in that it lacked straight lines of sight for security. A triangle or square, while requiring the minimum number of vantages for sight lines, enclosed too much unutilized space in its corners and presented too large a perimeter. Six sides required too many security vantage points, so the present shape was the sole option (Designing Black Rock City, 2007).

There is a certain poetic irony that a population of people ill-disposed towards the US military celebrates their non-conformity in a space whose organising geometry is a pentagon.11

Regardless of their mythologies, groups of people are remarkably good at finding and using resources, whether networked or centralised, and combining those resources and infrastructures (technical and social) to their advantage. Cultures, even those embedded in hierarchical, top-down systems of governance and commerce, are evolutionary, and networks find ways to leverage centralised resources, if only on the margins of a controlled environment. Networks, when they want to scale their efforts, quickly discover the advantages of hierarchical organisation for the functions that scale requires. The trick is finding a dynamic relationship between the two that renders the system both adaptable and accountable. Networks and hierarchies are the double helix of cultural DNA—as they successfully entwine, evolution is possible, and the metamorphosis that evolution entails.

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Cities/ 126 – 127

It is in this last principle, and Burning Man’s implementation of it, that one sees an effective central authority and governing hierarchy providing necessary infrastructure…


Guide toThe Mix

Mixed use developments will:

/Be the leading building typology in emerging new cities.

/Require successful place-making to reso

nate

with lasting quality and value.

/Be vertical communities.

/Need to respond and relate to th

e wider urban fabric of

a city, not just their immediate surroundings at the base.

/Maximise utilisation of floors with residential,

office, entertainment, sports and shopping facilities.

/Spread development risk.

/Open opportunities for diversifyin

g market share.

/Mean cities replace villages.

/Be a subliminal alternative.

/Allow for serendipitous encounters.

/A New Revolution

Stephan C Reinke

/Unconventional

Nik Karalis

/Beyond Sculpture

Antony Wood

“There is a changing dynamic toward vertical

villages as more people gravitate to the city li

fe

wanting a convenient blend of work, play and rest.”

Stephan C Reinke, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to The Mix/ 132 – 133

by Stephan C Reinke

A NEW REVOLUTION: URBAN MIXED USE

21st Century Guide to The Mix/ 134 – 135

Figure 1. Picadilly Tower, Manchester, UK. Designed by Woods Bagot

The evolution of our cities in the early years of the twenty-first century is signposted by two key words: regeneration and mixed use.

Cities like Manchester and Liverpool in England that were at the apex of the Industrial Revolution but fell into decline during the twentieth century, are now among the world’s most progressive and interesting laboratories for regeneration. They are revitalising and reusing the remnants from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century revolution with a new urban mixed use revolution.

The phenomenon is capturing the aspirations of cities to bring life, animation and commerce to disused grounds right in the heart of these areas. The primary imprimatur of this movement is the vitality, variety and range of uses that are brought together to achieve critical mass and density: transport, offices, homes, entertainment, retail, hospitality and public amenities. Find a site with historical legacy and a 200 year continuum of urban energy can be created.

The critical design factor, the secret ingredient in making these cocktails of mixed use resonate with lasting quality and value, is successful place-making. This entails the dynamic design of public spaces, legible and exciting circulation patterns, connectivity with the broader urban fabric and the use of public rooms to create a sense of space. The space between buildings is the setting where so much of a city’s activity takes place, both planned and through serendipity.

In Manchester, Woods Bagot’s Piccadilly Tower (Figure 1) will be the tallest hotel/residence in Europe and act as a landmark for one of Europe’s busiest mainline railway stations with direct lines to the international airport. However, this tall building is only the exclamation point for a six acre development which offers a variety of residential, hospitality, work, retail and entertainment venues. Built on a parking lot, which was once a Victorian rail yard, adjacent to an eighteenth century industrial canal system, this mixed use destination reflects the aspirations of Manchester connecting it from the ‘Steam Age’ to the ‘Jet Age’. Linkages to the multi model Piccadilly Station and generous external concourses and grand stairs provide a permeable, lively and vibrant ground plan (Figure 2).


Figure 2. The Manchester development provides a permeable, lively and vibrant ground plan


During the development of the scheme, references to the IRA attack were frequent. Very close to where development is taking shape, the IRA bomb exploded on Saturday 15 June 1996. It was peak shopping time on Father’s Day, injuring more than 200 people and destroying the fabric of the city’s main shopping area. This single act egregiously affected the city’s economy and infrastructure, as well as inflicting a heinous wound in the psyche of the local population. It created £411 million worth of damage and devastated the Piccadilly region.

Over the past decade, the city’s confidence and bravura have returned and, as the centre of a European Second City property boom, Manchester is now considered as the country’s second largest UK city, in spite of the fact that its population ranks third or even fourth by some statistics. Piccadilly is at the forefront of this regeneration—the city’s planners and developers are seeking to turn the whole of this location into a destination again—and not just a hub for business or shopping but a residential location that will be at the centre of place-making in the city, somewhere for the population to aspire to live.

Less than an hour away by motorway is the reawakening city of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. Like Manchester, Liverpool is looking to build a connection to its heyday when it was a shipping port to the world in the nineteenth century. Liverpool’s legacy as a crossing point, a transport centre actually extends back nearly 1000 years. The trades of boat building, rope making and sail weaving are all time honoured. Liverpool was the place where thousands ‘looked west’ for a new life and maritime success in this fine city of cultural venues, public spaces, trading houses and spectacular railway stations.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century and we find a large parking lot curiously located in a big hole in the ground right in the heart of Liverpool. A gash in the heart of a historical city where ropes were once woven and laid out across multiple city blocks in the eighteenth century and Liverpool Central Station stood prominently during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The sandstone walls of this splendid nineteenth century rail shed still run the length of the site, flanking the six metre deep depression. The remnants of the cast iron stanchions that once carried the great Victorian arched roof are still visible where the roof was cut away by welding torches.

The site features Newington Crossing, dating back to the sixteenth century, which links two quarters of the city, the RopeWalks and Paradise Hill. Much of the street pattern and urban fabric of RopeWalks is characterised by eighteenth and nineteenth century warehouses and merchants houses. The long, narrow streets were used to bind rope and are still integral to the personality of the area. However, following the Second World War there were sharp declines in manufacturing and dock activity. The advent of container freight in the 70s meant that Liverpool’s docks ceased to be a major local employer and in the early 80s unemployment rates in Liverpool were amongst the highest in the UK. A general economic and civic revival has been underway since the mid-90s and with an economy growing faster than the national average, regeneration of its Central area is timely.

A place rich in history, Liverpool Central is the perfect setting for the collision of old and new creating a dynamic new urban place. The design builds on the integration and linkage with the surrounding neighbourhoods, with clear and legible public spaces and way finding.

Where once the ropes and rigging were manufactured, a lineal ‘water stair’ with adjacent boardwalk will define the public realm (Figure 3). A new connection to the ticketing hall of Liverpool Central Station will connect residents, visitors, workers and guests to a dynamic colonnade of shops, restaurants, bars and public amenities. The lineal RopeWalks pattern is further reflected in the twin tall buildings (Figure 4), which act as a terminus to the city’s primary pedestrian promenade. ‘Spencer and Kate’, as these two tall buildings are known locally, offer a rich layering of urban massing and unmistakably identify this new dynamic destination as Liverpool Central.

It has been suggested that the density and the mix of these new urban interventions replace, or act as a surrogate for a lack of real family groupings. Our belief, that if properly and rigorously designed for lasting quality, the richness of space and interpersonal dynamics provides a new paradigm for urban living.

Joni Mitchell sings in her ballad from 1970, “… they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” The twenty-first century means taking that parking lot and creating new vibrant urban places which offer community and capture the aspirations of a city once more.

Figure 3. ‘Water stairs’ depict the old RopeWalks quarter. Liverpool Central


Figure 4. Liverpool Central, UK. Designed by Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to The Mix/ 0143 – 014321st Century Guide to The Mix/ 142 – 143


Under construction. Melbourne Convention Centre Development. Joint venture architects Woods Bagot and NH Architecture



Conventions and business workshops, we have all been to them, lured only by the prospect of another junket to some foreign and exotic destination. In reality when we get there the less time we actually spend in the venue the better—one eye on the clock, the other eye on the key note speaker. Because the less time we spend in a plenary session, the more time we can get away and enjoy a night out on the town, often lasting till all hours of the morning courtesy of a corporate AMEX, only to wake up with an almighty hangover. Dark sunglasses with unbearable head condition swearing to never to do it again. But we do.

Auditorium. Melbourne Convention Centre Development


We call this The Convention Syndrome. How quick can you escape? Where our minds should be focused and open to accepting new information they are actually closed off and de-motivated.

Most convention centres resemble human processing factories, not unlike airports—physically transporting people from one gate to another with no sense of orientation or local context. Added to this, the heightened sense of security, discomfort and lack of visual stimulation disengages the individual from the venue, creating anonymity.

Sure conventions are valuable networking vehicles, but how do we make the convention experience more holistic, allowing people to extract real value out of the meetings, actually absorbing information and research emanating from the plenary and breakout sessions? They need to become highly charged learning environments where real dialogue and interface is encouraged. These are venues where leading thinkers come together to propose and exchange ideas that will have real world impact.

Over the past few years, it has been predicted that online internet trading will minimise the need for traders to meet face to face and replace the requirement for exhibition spaces. The goods and ideas perception ally could be traded through virtual portals such as the latest website craze Second Life. What is happening in reality is an increase in the trade fair movement. Larger venues across the world are currently being planned. Casinos are now courting with convention centres to create alternative destinations for the delegates. Two major new organisations have emerged to cater for this demand. In 1987 EFTA was established by the European Fair Trade Organisation and followed in 1989 by IFTA, the International Association for Fair Trades, with 250 global participants and growing as the global market expands.

However, the convention centre needs to stand autonomously and rise above the parasitic add-on such as casinos. How do we re-engage with the excitement and anticipation of the original world expositions? The inaugural World Exhibition dates back to 1851. The Crystal Palace located in London’s Hyde Park, and designed by Joseph Paxton, inspired the great Conservatories of England. The Victorians were incredible collectors. The Crystal Palace became a Wunderkammer1 of the world’s commodities and oddities. Over six million visitors and 7000 exhibitors filled the Great Halls.

Buildings of this scale also allow for major urban integration and rejuvenation of otherwise disregarded land. The facility will be the missing link that finally completes the circuit of cultural and civic buildings that circumnavigate the central business district.

The new Melbourne Convention Centre Development will elevate the plenary event to become the main exhibition piece. A collective of incredibly charged minds contained within a very special vessel—the main 5000 seater auditorium hall is divisible into three smaller halls. This accommodates a range of venue sizes from 600 people through to 5000. The quality seating, which is fully automated, facilitates shorter bump-in times and a multitude of configurations, all with excellent site lines to the presenter. Operational flexibility and exceptional hospitality opportunities have been incorporated to extend the offering to the local community as well as international guests, in order to gain wider local attendance and provide life and activation beyond the delegate calendar.

Finally with new technological innovations the design of the convention centre has been awarded with the first 6 star Green Star environmental rating2 of this type of facility. The two principle innovations include: a low level air displacement system which delivers hot and cold air to a height of two metres and avoids wasteful air conditioning in large spaces not occupied by people; and the harvesting and recycling of water which is captured from the large roof surface and linked to a black water system.

While there are more and more excuses for people not to meet and engage on a personal level predominantly due to the enormous amount of time and alienation that the computer age demands from us, this building will make us re-think how we can unconventionally utilise and re-experience the convention building as an important catalyst for human interaction. It will demonstrate how convention and exhibition centres can become significant urban contributors to any lively and expanding metropolis.

This movement continued up until the beginning of the Second World War. Over recent times it has been rejuvenated with the latest set of exhibitions to launch onto the world stage in Shanghai in 2010.

These exhibitions have attained increasing prominence as grand events becoming economic, scientific, technological and cultural showcases. They serve as important platforms for exchanging innovative ideas and looking towards the future, and ultimately they act as brief snap shot of the current history of the world and its aspirations.

This same inspiration needs to influence the design of contemporary convention centres whose close relationship with the Trade Fair movement is fundamental—ideas sitting alongside new products. The ideas stem from the plenary session, which is at the core of every major international congress. These are large meetings which require full attendance by all qualified members and delegates, their topics cover all sorts of matters. They range from religion, medicine, physics and science, and politics. In short they are incredible gatherings of the world’s experts and its allied products.

Together with the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre Trust (MCET), joint venture architects Woods Bagot and NH Architecture are pioneering an unconventional approach to the design of these facilities. The new centre will be part of a new urban precinct which will include a Hilton Hotel directly interconnected with the convention centre and allied meeting rooms, residential apartments, commercial office spaces and a retail centre.

The Melbourne Convention Centre Development has the incredible advantage of occupying a large parcel of land right in the heart of Melbourne. Usually these venues are located on the outskirts of major cities due to their sheer size and volume. The building will have a personality that reflects the Melbourne character of the arts and sport capital. It will command exceptional views and visually interface directly with the central city with abundant daylight along movement paths. It will also incorporate elements of the adjoining colonial maritime precinct where historically the original trade vessels unloaded on the banks of the Yarra River.

The facility will have direct transport and pedestrian bridges back in the City of Melbourne to offer delegates a unique convention experience, not only educating them on up to date industry innovations, but also introducing them to the facilities that Melbourne has to offer.


“This building will have a personality that reflects the Melbourne character.”

Nik Karalis

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to The Mix/ 0155 – 015521st Century Guide to The Mix/ 154 – 15521st Century Guide to Life


Tall buildings are increasingly being used as signposts for the city. They are physical signifiers of both the success of a city on the international stage, and the vibrancy of the urban lifestyle it contains. However, while many tall buildings quickly become synonymous with a place, very few are actually inspired in their design by that place, and they fail to relate to the city in anything other than a visual sense.

This lack of relation to place is leading to rapid homogenisation of our urban centres on a global scale, where high-rise cities from America to Australasia are becoming indistinguishable. They are simply stage sets for an amalgam of tall icons, where the models are transportable. This amalgam is often distinctive in itself, but created from a common, global architectural language which denies the specifics of local culture and often hundreds of years of vernacular tradition. The transportability of the tall building design is demonstrated on a regular basis, with an unsuccessful tower proposal for Shanghai often reoccurring in modified form in the Middle East.

Of course, for a building typology which has only been in existence for a little over 100 years, there is no vernacular tradition to draw on. Design approaches for tall buildings have tended to follow one of two approaches. The first is the commercial approach: Curtain wall wrapping an extruded, highly-efficient floor plan, with very little variation/articulation with height. Secondly there’s the sculptural approach, where a visual icon for the city is sought from the outset. While the outcome of the latter usually results in elevating the typology beyond the banality typical of the commercial approach, there is nothing to root the building in the physical fabric of the city other than the client’s desire for uniqueness. The building’s physical connection to the city, other than by an often poorly-designed ground floor interface, is a purely visual one, with the tower usually dominating proceedings. The tower has simply become a piece of sculpture, an object to behold.

Of course, the aim of providing something sculptural, beautiful and inspiring in a tall building is noble in itself, it’s not enough to provide cities with both connection to their unique cultural/climatic setting, and coherence across their constituent urban parts. The ‘Tall Building Teaching and Research Group’, under the auspices of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, has been conducting research-through-design into this situation for a number of years now, ultimately developing hypothetical tall building design responses that are inspired by, or relate to, place. While the projects are hypothetical, they are based on real projects, with existing clients on actual sites. The following case study is one such example.

Core-Floor-Climate-City This project is based on the Heron Tower site, which is currently being developed by the Heron Corporation in conjunction with KPF architects, on the Bishopsgate/Houndsditch corner in the City of London. The design brief asked for a true mixed-use tower (office/residential/retail-leisure), approximately forty storeys in height (Figure 1).

The design ideas for this project flowed from a number of considerations involving the city, its climate and the mixed-use programme of the building. As shown in Figure 2, the first conceptual layer (Stepping) involved a consideration of the relationship between core, floorplate and environment. The typical centralised core arrangement of many high-rise towers is subverted by shifting the floor-plate relative to the statically-positioned vertical core and the north direction. Conceptually, the floor-shifting arrangement which results in the majority of the floor space to the north would lend itself to office function, since office space is optimally orientated to northern light and away from southern solar gain. Conversely, the floor-shifting arrangement which results in the majority of the floor space to the south would lend itself to residential function, since solar gain in residential spaces/balconies is welcome. Thus the first layer of the building defines itself as a series of villages of several floors of alternating office/residential function, staggered to the north or south of the core depending on the optimum environmental conditions of the function.

Figure 1. Core-Floor-Climate-City project Figure 2. Conceptual layer one. Stepping: Relationship between floor, core and north point (climate-solar gain).

N


The second conceptual layer (Twisting, see Figure 3) brings into consideration the wider physical fabric of the city. One of the great opportunities of tall buildings over low-rise buildings is that, unlike the latter which only usually have a visual connection to their immediate surroundings, a tall building has a visual connection to literally hundreds of places in a city. And this visual relationship changes with height in the tower, where specific viewing corridors are set up (both ‘of’ and ‘from’ the building) relative to height. Thus at a lower level a part of the building may have an opportunity to set up a dialogue with a nearby urban park or square, whereas the top of the building has an opportunity to communicate with an important place distant in the city. This can be exploited in the mass of the building, where the form or skin of the building is manipulated to respond to some relevant urban occurrence, near or far.

Thus the second conceptual layer in the project sees a twisting of the floor plates relative to the core (whereas they were previously stepped parallel to the core). The degree of twist is determined by optimum city views from the floor plate at differing heights, while still respecting the predominant north or south orientation as determined by the relationship between function and solar gain.

Of course this design response throws up myriad technical challenges, not least structurally and the impact on mechanical and engineering services through changing the position of the floors and alternating the residential/office functions. Vertical services/waste runs would need to be gathered at the transitional top/bottom between each village. Structurally, as exemplified in Figure 4, the building could be treated as a series of blocks placed on top of each other. Each block of four floors (residential function) and three floors (office function) would be structurally independent, with forces from each mega-frame transferring to the next. Point loads at strategic interfaces between the mega-frames could be resolved through transverse columns within the facades which also act as bracing.

The village box-type arrangement could also open up possibilities for creating larger volumes at strategic places, by removing floors and expressing the volume of the village in its entirety. Thus at the base of the building a grand-volume entrance lobby could be created, with a similar space at the top of the building to contain the retail-leisure-restaurant function (see Figure 6). Last but not least, the changing floor-plate nature of the tower creates the possibility for numerous external terraces (see Figure 5), for both office and residential functions. These green terraces not only give lungs to both the building and the city, they could be linked into a skygarden.

The result of this design approach is no less sculptural or iconic than many of the towers earlier bemoaned—certainly the design, if ever implemented, would create an icon which would certainly become synonymous with both the city and client. However, the building is more than just an over-blown piece of iconic high-rise sculpture. Every facet of the design can be traced to some dimension of the city; be it the physical nature of the urban fabric itself or the environmental nature of the site-specific climate. The vernacular traditions of the world, after all, though varied in nature, evolved out of the specifics of site and climate in any given culture.

In conclusion, it is important that the tall buildings of our future cities start to address these issues; to show responsibility to the local as well as the global. The global-transportable nature of the sculptural, iconic high-rise, needs to evolve into a model which is inspired by place. The alarming homogenisation of our world cities, and the people who inhabit them, demands it. We need to start celebrating the differences between places and work towards enhancing those differences, rather than following a single urban model without regard for culture or climate. We need to develop a new vernacular for the skyscraper; that vernacular has its foundation in place.

Figure 3. Conceptual layer twoTwisting: Relationship of floor to important views in/of the city

Figure 4. Structural content Figure 6. The opportunity for single-volume spaces within the mega-frame villages: right) at ground level; left)at top level

Figure 5. No less an icon, but a design response rooted in place: left) view from above; right) view looking up


Guide to Work

Work in the 21st century means:

/Computer processing power, wireless

technology

and the internet will transform the

way we work and live.

/An overhaul of workplace design to tackle

inefficiencies and unsustainable operations.

/The ageing workforce will challenge

Gen Y for the lime light.

/New ways of utilising cities a

nd buildings

for overloaded infrastructures.

/A new interpretation of work-life balance.

/More flexible working hours.

/Organisations will become virtual

as they structure themselves globally.

/A new generation of professionals seeking

a unique and engaging worklife.

/14 Hour City

James Calder

/Silver Lining

Jeremy Myerson

“How long will it take for us to break free

from industrial aged thinking? Nine to five,

hierarchy, supervision and the office are

all concepts of the past.”

James Calder, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Work/ 164 – 165

by James Calder


The information technology revolution that humankind has been creating since the invention and commercialisation of the telephone, radio, TV, PC and internet is accelerating as new products are developed. Each new generation becomes more adept at living and working with information and communications technologies in new ways. Whilst these technologies can take only a few months to appear and be successful (witness the iPod and Facebook), our city infrastructures and systems take much longer to adapt to these fundamental changes. To use an Industrial Age analogy, James Watt’s steam train has just run for the first time in terms of our understanding of the impacts on our cities and society of the information technology revolution.

The crisis that is facing us with climate change due to the unsustainable use of the earth’s resources is forcing us to look at new ways of doing more with less. There is no better place to start than our cities, where our archaic legacy systems from the Industrial Age and our own mindsets have created a system of breathless inefficiency and waste. Our planners and governments are starting to realise that adding more infrastructure is too expensive and usually only increases demand rather than improving existing conditions.

There is now greater effort on maximising the efficient use of the existing systems, such as a renewed focus on high rise buildings in central business districts such as the City of London (although there is the potential risk that it will denigrate the urban fabric that make these places unique). However, this is still Industrial Age thinking where ruthless synchronicity, reinforced by Frederick Taylor1 and Henry Ford2, was vital. We are now in the technological age where knowledge is power and a different type of physical and virtual synchronicity is required by the modern knowledge based organisation. It is possible to dramatically increase the utilisation of our cities by simply rethinking the 9–5 paradigm of work and creating the 14 hour working city.

A new modelThe re-engineering of our working days, from

our current 9–5 model into an early and late shift with an overlap in the middle of the day will have profound benefits for our society, including:

– An increase in the productivity of knowledge workers as they have more ability to control their day into concentrated individual work and collaborative team work

– The productivity of global organisations will also increase as the overlaps of time zones around the world will be far greater creating a more seamless twenty-four hour global business environment

– An increase of around 30–40% in the utilisation of public transport, roads, and office buildings

– An end to the crushing futility of the morning and evening peak hour rush

– A more flexible approach to working hours that will help people to balance their work and life where matching personality type with job demands can increase productivity. “Stated preferences are usually a clear indication of body clocks and, therefore, of efficiency” (Trotsky, 1987, p. 1).

Furthermore, this can be achieved without the negative effects felt by some night time shift workers. Research on circadian rhythms suggests that certain personalities will naturally prefer either the morning or afternoon shift. It seems that these rhythms are genetic rather than learnt (Sarkis, 2000) and that:

– 0.2% of the population are estimated to be ‘larks’: Bed at 9.30 pm, up at 4.30 am.

– 4.5% of the population are ‘owls’: Bed at 3.30 am, up at 11.30 am.

– The rest cluster around the mean (12.30 am – 8.30 am) according to a normal distribution (Merrow, Spoelstra & Roenneberg, 2005).

With this in mind, it is possible to cover the 14 hour work day without prescribing set shifts per se. It is assumed that the frequency distribution of people ranging from larks to owls follows a normal curve. Therefore the natural range of types represented in an organisation’s workforce should ensure that the nine hour block (6.00 am – 3.00 pm and 12.00 pm – 9.00 pm, assuming an eight hour day with a one hour break) is resourced via a flexible process of self-selected hours (Figure 1).

Whilst new technologies can take only a few months to appear

and be successful (witness the iPod and Facebook), our city infrastructures

and systems take much longer to adapt to these fundamental

changes.

21st Century Guide to Work/ 168 – 16921st Century Guide to Life

Figure 2. Utilisation of a typical office building

Outside the building

82%

9%

9%

Elsewhere in the building

At the desk

Overlap

Morning

6.00 am

7.00 am

8.00 am

9.00 am

10.00 am

11.00 am

12.00 pm

1.00 pm

2.00 pm

3.00 pm

4.00 pm

5.00 pm

6.00 pm

7.00 pm

8.00 pm

9.00 pm

Afternoon

Figure 1. The 14 hour work day

The stock market may be forced to open longer hours, and traders will need to choose which part of the trading day they physically are in the office for, although new software is making it easier to trade from any location.

Of course, every great idea comes with a curse. One downside may be greater pressure on some workers (particularly managers and specialists) to be working fourteen hours a day. The stock market may be forced to open longer hours, and traders will need to choose which part of the trading day they physically are in the office for, although new software is making it increasingly easy to trade from any location. Also, a stigmatisation into morning and evening people could develop, although in reality this type of work style choice is already apparent in knowledge industries where creativity is valued and personal choice is more tolerated.

SustainabilityIt is estimated that buildings contribute

more than 30% of global greenhouse emissions (Energy Information Administration, 2007), and yet they are one of our most under-utilised assets. The typical 9–5 knowledge worker spends approximately a third of their working day at their workstation or office, and around another third in the building (Marmot & Eley, 2000). This works out to a 9% desk utilisation and an 18% total building utilisation across the possible 168 hours in the week (Figure 2).

Increasing the utilisation of the workplace is the quickest and easiest path to the goal of sustainable design of office buildings. Good progress is being made around the world in terms of engineering, measurement and rating systems and this development is essential but does not address the changing nature of knowledge work. Many of the engineering models are still based on out of date thinking about work styles that assume everyone is at their desk from 9–5, that they are process workers rather than knowledge workers, that they still use typewriters rather than mobile devices.

Legacy systemsThe beginnings of settlement, based on

the ability to grow crops and domesticate animals, introduced humans to the cycles of nature—the seasons, the lunar cycles and the twenty-four hour rotation of the earth around our sun. We evolved with these cycles until the Industrial Revolution with the development of the clock, then electricity and the electric light bulb that allowed us to work in the most unnatural of ways—in a factory or clerical office. Synchronicity was an essential ingredient of the Industrial Revolution.

The invention of the PC and the internet has fundamentally altered the nature, location and necessity for the constant synchronicity of work. A combination of individual and team work is now essential in the knowledge economy. Furthermore, the jet plane has created physical connectivity and the internet virtual connectivity that enables us to work most effectively in the twenty-four hour global marketplace.

The IBM PC has only been around since 1984, and its impact is only being felt now. Our cities have not had time to respond to the fundamental changes of the information revolution and are fundamentally Industrial Age cities. Similarly, our planners and urban designers are only beginning to understand the implications of knowledge based economies and cities. Much of their thinking is based on Industrial Age synchronicity with little understanding of the new work and life styles. We are operating in a legacy system of physical infrastructure and urban design rationale.

There is much to learn about knowledge management and the new workstyles of knowledge workers. In most western economies around a quarter of all work is done at home, and the rapidly improving quality of virtual communication and its simultaneous reduction in price (Skype is free) will only increase this figure. At present the growth rate seems to be around 5% per year.


“Increasing the utilisation of the workplace is the quickest and easiest path

to the goal of sustainable design of office buildings. Good progress is being made around the world in terms of engineering, measurement

and rating systems and this development is essential but does not address

the changing nature of knowledge work. Many of the engineering models

are still based on out of date thinking about work styles that assume everyone is at

their desk from 9–5, that they are process workers rather than knowledge workers, that they still use typewriters rather than

mobile devices.” James Calder

Proposed tower, Brisbane. Designed by Woods Bagot 21st Century Guide to Work/ 170 – 171

21st Century Guide to Work/ 172 – 173

It is estimated that buildings contribute more than

of global greenhouse emissions (Energy Information Administration, 2007),

and yet they are one of our most under-utilised assets.

30%

These fundamental changes will have significant physical implications. An example of this is the rapid growth in conferences and the subsequent creation of conference and exhibition centres—this is a direct physical response to the power of the internet to connect people with a particular interest virtually (read more on this topic, ‘ Unconventional’, p. 142). The role of the town hall and town square was critical in the Industrial Age. The Information Age will require quite a different clustering of activities and events for people to interact effectively. Knowledge management theory tells us that we will see an increase in the range of spaces for tacit knowledge exchange, and whilst the best of spaces from the Industrial Age city will remain useful (and extremely pleasant), a richer menu of spaces for the information age will be demanded.

Organisations are just beginning to structure themselves globally (rather than federally by time zone and region) and we are seeing the first of a new breed of organisation that has no physical presence. These changes are observable in the growing awareness of work-life balance as the demands on many workers to work extended hours increases due to globalisation.

As an aside, this has health implications in terms of circadian rhythms: “As our society moves towards a worldwide 24/7 culture, with shift work and jet lag almost the norm, circadian clock research is becoming highly relevant to human health, behaviour and quality of life” (Merrow, Spoelstra & Roenneberg, 2005, p. 934). Interfering with circadian rhythms can have a significantly negative impact on business: human fatigue is estimated to cost global business more than $370 billion annually (Moore-Ede cited in Daugherty, 1993). Rigidly sticking to the idea of synchronicity can also impact an organisation’s ability to hire staff—probably the biggest issue facing many organisations at present. Flexible working arrangements are considered the best way to attract and retain staff (Conlin, 1999). In a British study, one in three people (from a sample of 5000) said they would prefer the option to work flexible hours over a £1000 pay rise (Flexibility valued by British workers, 2003).

ConclusionThe design profession, and in particular

city planners, needs to quickly come to terms with the fundamental changes in our work styles and lifestyles due to the Information Age. The time bomb of global warming has created a burning platform that demands urgent focus. The stakes are high. We can dramatically improve the utilisation and effectiveness of our cities by a simple rethink about synchronicity and work-life balance. The organisations and cities that are first to grasp these fundamental opportunities created by information technology will also be the first to prosper and create competitive advantages that will last for generations and they will dramatically help in our drive to be more sustainable.

Opposite page City Central, Tower 1, Adelaide, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot


SILVER LINING

By 2020, close to half of Europe’s adult population of working age will be over fifty. More and more of us will remain in the workplace for longer, prevented from retiring by that great black hole in pension funds. We will also account for the biggest component of consumer spending over the next few years. The good news is that we will be protected by age and disability discrimination legislation and buoyed by growing interest of employers in retaining knowledge and experience. Many older workers are, by de facto, knowledge workers. The bad news is where we will work.

by Jeremy Myerson


Despite all the demographic evidence to the contrary, most architects and developers still persist in putting up office buildings for an overwhelmingly young workforce. All that glass and steel, all those hard surfaces, all those glaring overhead lighting grids and precarious café stools—the modern workplace adds up to an acoustic, visual and physical nightmare for an ageing workforce. It is the architectural equivalent of the office paintball outing.

The modern office derives from the factory floor—Taylorism1 and Fordism2 are its guiding lights. But it is hardly conducive to knowledge work in the early years of the twenty-first century. At a time when flexibility, connectivity and comfort will become more influential in how well people perform at work, rigid time-and-motion principles in planning office space are still routinely trotted out. If ever metamorphosis was required in workplace design, it is required in relation to the trend towards ageing populations.

The problem is that older office workers hardly signal that they want things to be different. Hanging onto the job and not drawing attention to themselves is more important. To explore and frame an agenda for change, the Royal College of Art (RCA) Helen Hamlyn Centre in London, a centre for inclusive design, has been conducting a series of industry-funded studies over the past four years, under the title of ‘Office-Age’.

Architects, interaction designers and design engineers drawn from the talent pool of new RCA graduates have been collaborating with a range of industrial partners to span the generation gap in office design. Collectively, the ‘Office-Age’ projects describe what a more age-friendly workplace might be like in terms of rethinking such issues as lighting, furniture, knowledge-sharing spaces and the relationship between the workplace and the city. The studies employed a range of research techniques from questionnaires and probes to experience prototyping.

What the research team discovered is that older office workers not only present a challenging set of ergonomic issues but also a parallel range of emotional ones as well. Add new ways of working, which are taking more people outside the conventional workplace and recasting the office as a social hub, and you have a complex dynamic for which to design.

Vision, posture, balance, muscular strength, hearing, sleep regulation and memory are all affected by ageing, as is the ability to maintain constant body temperature. Offices currently fail those over fifty in terms of the most basic ergonomic factors. Simple things like locking mechanisms on castors, inaccessible plugs under desks or the inability to switch on and off lights cause untold problems.

Then there are the more emotional and aspirational factors to consider. Older people at work appear fed up with the hard technological palette of most offices. They want more organic, sensual and tactile environments with more access to green spaces and natural light. They want technology to help them organise and share their knowledge, not drive them to distraction.

They aren’t prepared to be an anonymous cog in the machine, hot-desking with a roving pedestal under a static fluorescent strip. At their life stage, they are carrying more baggage, physically and emotionally, so need more storage and a way to visually signal their experience and presence within the workplace. They also want more choice and control over how, when and where they work: a greater variety of work settings within a building is welcomed by third-agers, who won’t be working nine to five and still want to learn.

The modern office derives from the factory floor—Taylorism and Fordism are its guiding lights. But it is hardly conducive to knowledge work in the early years of the twenty-first century. At a time when flexibility, connectivity and comfort will become more influential in how well people perform at work, rigid time-and-motion principles in planning office space are still routinely trotted out. If ever metamorphosis was required in workplace design, it is required in relation to the trend towards ageing populations.

21st Century Guide to Work/ 178 – 179

Office buildings with thin ‘finger’ wings are becoming more popular to give all workers external views. And a new generation of corporate break-out spaces are abandoning the obsession with cappuccino-bar youth culture to offer some old-fashioned comfort, albeit within a wireless hotspot.

However, much more needs to be done on the ground—and more ethnographic research is required to fully understand the impact of an ageing workforce in a knowledge economy, especially as welfare costs for the old are set to escalate. This is why the government-funded research councils in the UK are currently supporting a number of studies related to the issue. The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre is working on a global study with academic partners in Japan and Australia called ‘Welcoming Workplace’ to learn more about what will persuade older knowledge workers to step back from the cliff edge of retirement.

The issues involved are varied and complex, relating to government policy, pension funds, accessible technology and much else. But office design and culture sit right at the heart of the matter. Currently, a macho business culture endures in the workplace that is all about getting on with it and going for it. It is about the survival of the fittest, and not necessarily about nurturing and including those with the most experience and knowledge. This is reflected in the physical environment.

This culture has to change. Office design needs to become more inclusive. By that, I don’t mean architects providing more ramps for wheelchairs and bigger signs on the corporate campus. I mean getting to grips with how we really want to work in the knowledge economy as we grow older and stay working for longer. It is the challenge of social sustainability and it is every bit as important as the environmental sustainability we all talk about today. Ageing happens to us all. Let’s build the workplace we’d be happy to hang around in.

One significant finding was an appetite for environments which proactively monitor health and encourage healthier habits at work. Health-monitoring devices built into chairs and blue lighting which changes during the day to suppress the sleep hormone melatonin were two of the proposals from the RCA research team, which prototyped a number of designs to show how offices could flex to meet the age curve over the next fifteen years.

Parallel to the practical design proposals, the researchers also studied the literature worldwide on ageing and knowledge workers. The evidence suggests that the omens are not good going forward. Not only do we marginalise or misunderstand the needs of ageing workers, but architects and developers are also in the dark about what settings will help knowledge workers to be more productive in the office.

Forty years after the American economist Peter Drucker first defined the term ‘knowledge work’, he felt moved to comment on knowledge worker productivity: ‘We are in the year 2000 roughly where we were in the year 1900 in terms of the productivity of the manual worker’ (Drucker, 1999). Productivity of the manual worker increased roughly fifty times during the twentieth century through changes in factory design. Can we be confident that knowledge worker productivity will make similar advances in the twenty-first century through changes in office design?

The jury is out on this. According to a recent paper in the MIT Sloane Management Review, companies today are experimenting heavily with workplace redesign but are not learning very much in the process (Davenport, Thomas & Cantrell, 2002). The literature review also tells us that many companies are experiencing a loss of expertise and ‘corporate memory’ as older workers leave the organisation without passing on their knowledge. Even when they have the option to stay, they choose to go because the conventional factory-farm workplace holds little allure.

Some positive developments are taking shape in the office marketplace. Innovations in furniture, lighting and acoustics to aid concentration and flow — older knowledge workers complain of constant interruptions in open plan space — are emerging. Experiments to balance private work with collaborative work within one physical environment have been underway for some time.

Even when they have the option to stay, they choose to go because the conventional factory-farm workplace holds little allure.


Guide toPlay

Future play means:

/Mid life will be the new youth.

/Philanthropic pursuits.

/Personal fulfilment.

/Infinite variety of activities and experiences.

/Intelligent choices.

/Nurturing health and well being.

/Shopping as entertainment.

/Knowledge, values and conscience.

/Work-life balance but not conventionally as we know it.

/Focus and clarity.

/Work More Play Less

Nik Karalis

/Barcode: Beyond the Brand

Rob Steul & Troy Wear

/The Big Picture

Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney

“It is an evolutionary step

that one day the more

we work the less we will need to play, and work

will no longer translate to pain or sorrow but

equate to fulfilment.”

Nik Karalis, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Play/ 0185 – 0185

WORK MORE PLAY LESSby Nik Karalis

21st Century Guide to Play/ 184 – 185


The work ethic and the changing social circumstances of the workforce is a well documented research topic. The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative view of the work-life balance and how this will affect a new generation of mixed usage buildings and urban environments as a response to the current work-life imbalance.

The principle of work ethic from classical times was one of hardship and degradation. The ancient Greek word for work was ponos, meaning pain or sorrow. This was the prevailing sentiment up until the Protestant Reformation Period where physical labour became culturally acceptable.

According to Max Weber, these values became extended and drove the spirit of capitalism (Weber, 1904). The work ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprise and the accumulation of wealth for investment purposes. The Protestant work ethic was the force behind an unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that led to the development of capitalism.

This principle has been extended beyond its Protestant routes and has been adopted by European Catholics and recently has been the driving force behind the Japanese economy and the Chinese march into the mass middle class.

During the Industrial Age, work was primarily mechanical and required little decision making. In contrast, the Information Age’s jobs require more discretion and a considerable amount of thinking thus affording the worker with the power of decision making. This important transformation from enslavement to the empowerment of the workforce has led to a more complex predicament where there is greater self expression and self fulfilment. There has been a significant movement away from society as an ordered hierarchical and introspective structure. There will no longer be any social distinctions between the private and public lives of the work force as the world opens itself up to be more interactive and adventurous.

Workers in the early twenty-first century have experienced significant cultural, educational and social shifts driven by the advent of the Information Age, bringing with it changes in workers expectations and uncertainty about the future. Alarming statistics show that the western world is working longer and longer hours (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003; OECD, 2007; Statistics New Zealand, 2006):

– In the 1950s less than one third, or 29%, of women were actively employed

– By 2005 the female labour workforce increased to 57%, almost double

– Between 1980–2000 the proportion of full-time workers working a 40-hour week declined from 39% to 24%

– But the greatest increase—from 10% to 18%—was the proportion of full-time workers, working between 50–59 hours per week; predominantly professionals, managers, administrators and people working in agriculture. Those working 50 hours or more per week increased from 20% to 30%

– There has been increases in the proportion of employed men and women working part-time from 1985 to 2005, from 6% to 15%

– The OECD Employment Outlook 2004 ranks Australia and the Slovak Republic as the fifth highest countries for hours worked per worker following the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece and Mexico

– There is no real official data on overtime hours either paid or unpaid, however, women are more likely than men to work unpaid overtime.

Clearly this pattern is not sustainable. With a focus towards changing values, a new definition of work/balance needs to be defined. It will require new parameters of flexibility, education, socialisation and a reward system. Of course, it will take some time before the majority of work environments will adopt these new principles. We can however clearly predict the end of the 8 plus 8 plus 8 work, rest and play equation, as explored in ‘14 hour city’ (p. 164).


Q: Who asked for increased

working hours?

Q: Who asked for workplace

empowerment?

Q: Who asked for technological

advances?

A: No

Q: Who asked for child care at the

workplace?

Q: Is this a conspiracy to

work more play less or is the work-life

balance totally fictional?

Q: Who asked for women’s

emancipation from the home?

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Play/ 0189 – 018921st Century Guide to Play/ 0189 – 0189

“Young workers tend to view work differently, for them hard work is not a virtue in its own right.”

work differently

With empowerment, opportunity and positive work ethic, there is likely to be a growing expectation that will require some form of reward system. Workers will quickly become impatient if progress is not experienced in a relatively short period. The reward may not always be financial; rather it will be a more qualitative scenario as is currently being demanded by our youth’s concern for a better balanced and ethical life.

Changes in a new lifestyle reward system are compounded with changes in the workforce resource. Gender, age and flexible work patterns are influencing the audience of workers. Young workers tend to view work differently, for them hard work is not a virtue in its own right.

Braude describes another changing attitude of the workforce; socialisation—a new skill learnt from our basic childhood environment (1985). Previously there was very little engagement with colleagues; the workplace was an environment where you once clocked in and out. New occupational cultures are especially influenced by the inner fraternity of colleagues and have a significant impact on the work ethic and the social experience at work. With this changing dynamic of the definition of work ethic, we can predict a new scenario for the twenty-first century worker where flexibility, learning and socialisation are incorporated in the transformation of the contemporary work/life/education balance and in turn, the types of environments that promote and respond to these new values and behaviours.

The new conversation in the twenty-first century is an acknowledgement that people are unique with differing view points and desires to communicate and contribute to discovering new frontiers of possibilities and knowledge. Being isolated will become a sign of poverty. No longer will we recognise work as drudgery. At any time the empowered worker will call on the interplay of all three components of our daily experience of work, rest and play. In fact the boundaries will become so entangled that traditional definitions of work will no longer suffice to explain the overlap. Work will be the pivotal entity by which we value our position and contribution to our society.

The workplace will no longer be simply engaged in economics. They will need to become modern educational and cultural institutions replacing schools and museums as life long learning enterprises. They will allow for more interactive relationships between employees and employers. Both age, gender and cultural barriers will be broken down. Etiquette will be replaced with curiosity, acceptance and inclusion of difference.

The conventional parameters of where and when we work will begin to loosen up. This is not going to happen easily. It will require a new generation of leaders and managers who are prepared to break down barriers and begin to re-imagine and reinvent the world to allow for intense bursts of effective and creative outcomes interspersed with social activities. It will also require new spaces within the workplace and beyond into the city to facilitate collaboration and engagement in diversified environments. There will need to be a re-emphasis on cultural, civic and public buildings to allow a pathway to a wider consciousness of global ideas.

An example of alternative environments is the recently completed Ivy project in Sydney, Australia. This mixed usage venue accommodates several types of human indulgences including work, rest and play to exist together under one venue. Diverse mixed usage venues such as Ivy will allow for the interplay of both work and life and represent an emerging building type which will reduce the impact of prolonged and isolated activities. Creative outcomes are not a simple formula of intense hours of dedication in the office but a balance of reverting or suspending decision making until the mind has had sufficient time to allow for free play and invention, perhaps even allowing time to make mistakes.

It will not be an easy task to accept this liberal approach to the workplace environment. Traditional barriers will need to be broken down. There will need to be radical pioneers who challenge the status quo and provide effective measurable examples of the benefits of the work-life balance proposition. It is, however, an inevitable evolutionary step until one day, the more we work the less we will need to play and work will no longer translate to pain or sorrow but equate to fulfilment.


BARCODE: BEYOND THE BRAND by Rob Steul & Troy Wear

The Barcode brand consists of two bars in diverse areas of London, Soho and Vauxhall. The bars are considered as ‘go to’ destinations for the UK capital’s nightlife, and have been critically feted by design magazines and blogs around the world.The newer of the two sites, in Vauxhall, was designed by Rob Steul, Senior Principal and Lifestyle Designer at Woods Bagot’s London studio. In the following conversation Rob talks with Troy Wear, owner of Barcode and entrepreneur on the importance of design to the brand, and its effect on his business position in the competitive bar market.

Barcode, London, UK. Designed by Woods Bagot


RS: When we were designing the space for Vauxhall, we were conscious that it was to have a more generalist approach rather than catering for a particular niche. The definitions between the city’s different scenes are starting to blur anyway.

TW: London is no longer ghetto-ised, it is the cross-pollination that makes the city interesting.

RS: And that is exactly what you did in Vauxhall by investing time and money and going to this new part of town and making it work. Barcode Vauxhall created a destination, it is a venue for everyone and was designed to appeal as such. We are going to take these lessons to Soho where there is much less space to work for.

TW: These buildings were all initially eighteenth century houses and you just don’t have the space to work with. And, personally, I hate venues where you can lean on one wall and spit on the other! Most Soho spaces are just corridors and freedom of movement is massively impinged.

RS: And the new design for Soho completely rationalises the circulation of people; whereas before you had to go into the bar and then back into the loos and then through the crowd to the coat check, now we have a vertical corridor moving between the floors so the mass of people can be bypassed. This is a crucial example of the design becoming synonymous with the brand as clients will take these experiences away with them.

Do you think the big bar operators devote as much thought to the design as we have done on this project?

TW: I detest the chain bar, the homogenised experience. You don’t have to maintain the brand simply through repetition. That is why I am keen to take some key signifiers of the Barcode brand with me, but don’t just want to repeat the design experience.

We are engineering uniqueness, unique to the Soho destination. Vauxhall is a very different destination and we are using the space very differently. You get the huge operators with their generic tat all over the place, then they say “let’s have one of those in Soho”. Then they try and shoehorn their design ethic into Soho and it is all some homogenised awfulness. Why would you travel to this great part of London and then visit a generic bar and have a generic bar experience?

RS: All the way from the hospitality industry from bars to hotels, the operators are now trying to create uniquely branded destinations. This strategy is working all over the world, the balance of enjoying a brand experience and knowing where you are going to without it being formulaic. And this is what the big operators have been getting so wrong.

TW: They just take something that has gone right on previous occasions and replicate it, believing that this will guarantee success. I believe that our approach, which is using subtle brand signifiers within the design, creates the uniquely reassuring experience that my customers want. The big operators are too process driven in their approach to design, they are reluctant to take any chances.

RS: And that is what we are going to do, reinterpret the Soho design through the lessons learnt on Vauxhall to achieve a new design.

TW: From son back to father, that is great isn’t it!

Rob Steul: On the Barcode project, I think that we achieved an outcome together that was far better than had we worked on it alone. I would like to be able to communicate that process to a wider audience, as a representation of how Woods Bagot works.

Troy Wear: This being the case, I would like to assess the idea of the designer talking to the businessman and understanding the value of design: it is important that they have an appreciation of design and how it fits into the key parts of their business. I want to always enjoy the design process and to appreciate what is created. This may have made me less money at the end of the day, but it is the essence of how I work!

RS: The Barcode Vauxhall project was pioneering; you took the Barcode brand, an icon of the Soho scene, and brought a real evolution to the area. As the design team, we needed to make an impact, we needed to show that Barcode had arrived south of the river, the bar had to make a splash – and the architecture started from that point. We also faced the challenge of incorporating a railway arch into the design, but quickly realised that it could become part of the brand and that helped lead the design.

TW: Yes, incorporating the arch into the design was crucial. We had to make it work successfully.

RS: Cast your mind back to the first time we met, when the process started. Taking a very strong brand, Barcode, the only kind of bar with its reputation in that sector, and transferring it to a new location was a challenge. The Soho site was synonymous with its location, very much a destination brand, so moving to a new and up and coming part of London needed to be supported architecturally. The loyal client base enjoyed a bar experience that they knew as Barcode in Soho and the Vauxhall site could not be allowed to dilute the brand in any way. Soho is an experience with strong brand connotations; it has graphics associated with it, the colouring, the logo itself, are all very strong. As the designers, we had to utilise all this brand history.

TW: The clientele have always come to Barcode because it is a place for them to enjoy, a place that offers an inclusive experience in a way that other bars catering to the Soho scene do not.

RS: And this is what we had to produce in Vauxhall; it was a coming of age for the brand. Now we are working on re-fitting and extending the Soho site and, ironically, the success of the Vauxhall site is inspiring this work. We are creating something finer, not as chunky—we are doing something more sophisticated.

TW: It is finer, as it is a smaller space, Soho space is far more limited, and we are working within stricter limits.

RS: With Vauxhall we did something that had never really been done in London and are now bringing it back to Soho but doing so in a scale that is refined, but grand in its aspirations.

TW: It is part of the brand evolution; taking things that have worked and re-introducing them to the Soho environment. I like to take little signifiers, some of the lights, tables and benches. They might be too subtle for customers to be actively aware of but they provide some collective brand reassurance because the similarities remind them of the other, familiar space. It is certainly not uniformity, which I think is a massive mistake, but there are similarities that bring the bars together, without making them boring.

RS: I suppose in Soho there is the added danger of a clientele who have been visiting the first Barcode for eleven years now, they know the place and know what they want. In refurbishing that site, we have to be sensitive to this and the memory that is shared by all who have visited it.

TW: But you have to reinvigorate the brand, to prevent it from becoming obsolete. Consumers move fast so we have to, through design, create an affinity, a loyalty that ensures they stick with us. As we have said before, Barcode is a destination bar, it is tucked away down a back street but people continue to seek it out.

RS: How do you explain the fact that it is one of the few bar brands that is known outside of the UK? It is renowned in New York and Madrid.

TW: I lived in the US and I think that it is where my understanding of the little details that people like to experience in a bar comes from. And comfort is a primary part of that; customers enjoy excellent air conditioning, great design and space.

RS: Comfort is a massive association with the Barcode brand. For instance, the sprung timber floors were a huge expense, but it makes people feel more comfortable and they take that impression away from the bar experience. You could have put in a cheaper concrete floor but you took on the extra expense and it worked for you.

TW: I have always found that people do not tend to know why they are happy with a lifestyle experience but they do know why they are unhappy. And it tends to be the little bits and pieces, the design around the edge; things like toilets, or sound that it too toppy, or a bad echo. All these smaller issues upset the mind subliminally, and it is these unconscious signifiers that add up to the brand experience as a whole.

RS: Within the Barcode Vauxhall design, we worked hard to create more than one space. We were able to add a third space by working with the railway arch, to create a front bar, a back bar, and an upstairs space as a chill-out room. The idea being that you could come in from the front of the bar into these other spaces and have choices. That is one of the recurring features of the Barcode brand, the use of different spaces.

TW: It really is, and the irony is that the Soho site now doesn’t quite match up to the standards of Vauxhall. But the customers are quite polarised by the two bars. Some people like the closed in, cosy, walled feeling generated by Barcode Soho and others like the space of Vauxhall.

THE NEW AGE OF CINEMA REVISITS ITS EARLY AVANT-GARDE ROOTSby Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney


The media landscape has been through significant changes over the past decade and in our own lives it is a constant presence as we surf the Internet, while dipping into magazines, while watching a DVD and texting throughout. In an era where you can post your own film on YouTube and broadcast to a global audience within hours, many have doubted the future of the commercial cinema as we know it.


Yet research is showing that the digital era has actually helped rather than hindered the development of the commercial cinema by both redefining and reinforcing the ritualistic patterns of behaviour associated with cinema-going that will ensure its survival well into the future. Above all, it places importance on new realms of cinematic escapism at the focus of cinema design—a concept that was in fact first touched on in the experimental cinematic art of the Dada and Surrealist movements in the early twentieth century.

The history of cinema is grounded in technological and artistic experimentation, and broadly linked to economic, political and ideological conditions. From its early twentieth century beginnings in the silent era, to wartime protest/propaganda and then to fairytale fantasy, it is the shared sense of experience and escapism provided that remains cinema’s core attraction.

For many, the ritual of a trip to the cinema is rooted in childhood and is rare time together with a partner, family and friends. Even with the prolific spread of home cinemas, nothing can recreate the thrill of the genuine big screen experience on an emotional and sensorial level (Figure 1) (Hall, 2007).

Cinema offers a rare opportunity to completely escape from the everyday grind, to switch off from everyday concerns. It is also a place of aspiration, fantasy and glamour where beautiful people and places transport the viewer to another world.

In some ways this uncertainty of the plotline and broad possibility of directorial techniques recalls the realm of cinematic art which began with avant-garde concepts from the Dadaist and Surrealist movements in the 1920s and 1930s. Politically charged artists concentrated their anti war politic by escaping from the prevailing standards in art through public gatherings, demonstrations, publication of art/literary journals, and film. According to early manifesto’s, its films were “… bathed in a general indifference to ‘making sense’ - unless it is making sense of its own deconstruction” (Michaud, 2004). Artists including Francis Picabia, Jean Berlin, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray collaborated on the film Entr’acte (1924) where the absence of any binding narrative framework gave director Rene Clair complete freedom to employ slow motion, fast motion, jump cuts, and parallel editing to rearrange, intensify, or diminish the relationships of events leading up to the provocative subject matter of a funeral march (Mussman, 1966). Above all they capitalised on the shock value of screening their work to large groups of people facilitated through the cinema.

Closer to present day, in his book Poetics of Cinema (1995), the accomplished Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz also criticised the narrow bandwidth of the Hollywood genre and called for strategies whereby the autocracy of the director can be shifted towards the notion of a cinema that is located in the realm of the audience. How to achieve this while preserving the beloved shared experience suggests a much smaller cinema ‘pod’ concept that can house 30–50 people. With a small scale group, perhaps an event with friends or a corporate function, the movie could offer a range of characterisations and plot developments that would permit a variety of narrative sequences selected by the viewers (Ruiz, 1995). Another option is the notion of a ‘virtual cinema’ where the film is actually inhabited by its audience who then become agents of and protagonists in its narrative development.

Today, new digital contexts are setting an appropriate platform for the further evolution of the traditions of independent, experimental and expanded avant-garde cinema (Shaw & Weibel, 2002). Even in the mainstream cinema environment, an emerging multimedia experience suggests that traditional big screen cinemas, coupled with standard narrative plotlines, no longer have the sole capacity to represent, through standard film genres, events that are themselves complex, multi-dimensional, and interactive.

Further embracing technology and borrowing from the home-theatre genre will expand the cinema’s potential impact and connection with audiences. Large commercial cinema chains have already learnt from the success of boutique art-house typology and shifted gears to accommodate small to medium sized screens, intimate high-end ‘Gold Class’ boutique theatres, as well as extravagant wide-screen spectacles.

The next wave of development will offer patrons the flexibility to probe emerging possibilities of interactive, performance, and net-based technology. While the classical cinema has been formally defined as “the collective experience of one fixed stable projector projecting a moving image on one screen in one room,” (Shaw & Weibel, 2002) contemporary practises of cinema are challenging traditional delivery by changing many of these characteristics—for example multiple screens, panorama screens, moving projections and armrest controls.

The first international exhibition on new cinematic forms, Future Cinema, was held in Germany in 2003. Crossing into the realm of cinematic art, the exhibition explored a new era of hybrid cinema which melds traditional cinema, television, video, experimental literature and the net. There was a strong emphasis on work that diverged from the conventional projected screen format and explored more immersive and technologically innovative environments such as multi-screen, panoramic, dome projection, shared multi-user, and on-line configurations (Shaw & Weibel, 2002). Another central focus was on works that explored creative approaches to the design of interactive non-linear narrative content, which translates to an abolition of the ‘central conflict theory’ that characterises the Hollywood cinema.

Social rulesCinema etiquette

cinema

Focused attention

Increased ability to encode the experience more accurately and with more detail –

more personal invest-ment

High level of emotionOptimal level of arousal due to surround sound, visuals and use of music which elicits

emotion Attention plus emotive experience equals very high level of recall

Figure 1. Behavioural psychology of the cinema experience. Reproduced with permission from Hall, 2007 ©


Gold Class Bar, Greater Union, Parramatta, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot

Designing outside the box– “Cinema remains the most popular leisure

activity … ninety-two per cent say it is their most enjoyed activity” (Holmes, 2007).

– A combination of more diverse entertainment options and shrinking release windows has brought about a new wave of thinking in cinema design where the show begins well before you take your seat; the average time spent in foyers is twenty-one minutes (Holmes, 2007).

– The emergence of automated ticket machines and online food purchase will support the smooth transition between everyday life and the fantasy realm of the cinema.

– A range of retail, food and beverage environments enables patrons to relax and surrender themselves to the experience without queuing.

– A highly adaptable floor plan, for example glass walls that form a partition for a café, can be moved to expand the foyer to accommodate different events such as a red-carpet film premieres.

– Cinema is one of the last remaining forms of media to guarantee shared experiences, with an average party size of three people (Holmes, 2007). Options now include fibre-optic connections for video-conferencing or closed-circuit programming that can be downsized or modified for corporate events, seminars and convention activities, live sporting and music events.

– The ‘pod’ concept is a theatrette, seating 20–50 people, with individually controlled volume, start time and air conditioning, which can be sold to a single group for a classic or interactive movie experience, corporate event, music or sporting event telecast.

– ‘Gold Class’ high-end experiences are popular in intimately scaled theatres or ‘pod’ environments with reclining seats and food and beverage services provided.

– Once films are over, lounges and bars prolong the outing experience. A visual connection to the external environment provides areas for patrons to relax and stay a little longer.

Gold Class Lounge, Greater Union, Campbelltown, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot

of experience.


Guide toShop

Retail futures equal:

/An enriching not impoverishing experience.

/A devotion to luxury brands.

/A range of retail typologies dependent

on land value and location.

/Branded retailing communities.

/Fusion of retail with entertainment (art,

literature, music, film, sports, gastronomy).

/Influence of Chinese con

sumer patterns.

/Raising buyer value and reducing costs.

/Retail theatrics to gain loyalty.

/Polarised models: internet versus personalised

service; low cost versus indulgent luxury.

/Advancing automation and technologies

impacting service, speed and personalisation.

/A return to authentic shopping experiences.

/Local customisation to provide diversity of experience.

/For Sale: China

Jason Marriott & Iris S Hwang

/Treasure Towers

Stephen Jones & Iris S Hwang

/Mall Theatrics

Mathilde Lucas

/Retail of the Future:

Yongxin Mall

Jason Marriott & Omid Ferdowsian

/Enlighten Me

Omid Ferdowsian

& Tewa Sirilaklang

“Shopping is the new art gallery.”

Stephen Jones, Woods Bagot

FOR SALE:CHINAby Jason Marriott & Iris S Hwang

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Shop/ 212 – 213

Twenty years ago there was no middle class; today it’s more than 100 million and rising. China’s retail trade is becoming the largest in the world, well above US$2 trillion dollars, nearly twice as high as Japan and two thirds the size of the American market (Okonkwo, 2007). Eventually it will overtake the European Union in purchasing power. Although a few steps behind neighbours like Japan and Korea, China’s market is currently undergoing an enormous transformation from an agriculture-based single-party communist nation to a unique hybrid of communist politics mixed with a capitalist economy. Yet this strange marriage of ideals is something Deng Xiaoping thought possible once famously saying ‘…let some people get rich first’, so others can get rich later.

Where is China today in respect to Deng’s vision? Becoming wealthy. What was almost unthinkable for the average person not so long ago, is now possible, giving birth to the largest aspiring middle class in the world. This emerging group is seeking ways to distinguish themselves from the masses by purchasing conspicuous luxury goods, leaving Chairman Mao style jackets at home and donning outfits with recognisable monograms of international fashion houses, albeit mostly counterfeits. Western style consumerism is transforming everyday comrades into fashionista-wanna-be’s.

Undoubtedly, international luxury brands are experiencing one of the largest surges in demand from China. Brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci are the first and sure stop for those wishing to make a statement, while the more established wealthy are now venturing into the less common, yet more prestigious boutique fashion houses of Milan and Paris to further distinguish themselves.

Luxury brands are now diversifying and exploring the fusion of retail with entertainment forms such as art, literature, music, film, sports, youth culture and gastronomy. Not only can one dress in an Armani suit and make-up, but dine at an Armani bar furnished with Armani furniture and decorated with Armani flowers, consuming an exquisite dinner followed by Armani pralines. This lifestyle pattern revolves not around the consumable product itself but the intangible benefits gained from the association with certain brands. Our self image is derived through interaction with others around us. Particular products and brands have symbolic value and we evaluate them on their consistency with our ideal self image, in other words, who we’d like others to think we are. Image inherently affects other psychological phenomena such as self esteem, and social constructs such as status.

One of Barbara Kruger’s famous works (1990), a photo lithograph printed on a paper shopping bag sums up the growing trend well: ‘I shop, therefore I am’. As one’s appearance and material possessions become more a symbol of wealth and affluence, Chinese are adopting shopping as a major part of their lives.

However, one should not mistake the growing desire among Chinese people for western goods as blind infatuation. The continuing debate and public outcry over the appropriateness of the international coffee giant Starbucks within the Forbidden City in Beijing, demon-strates that Chinese people are not open to all western ideas (Shen & Zhao, 2007). The Starbucks controversy reminds everyone of the need for cultural sensitivity and respect for nationalistic people with a proud, long and rich history.

China has seen one of the most dramatic explosions of wealth creation in recent human history.

21st Century Guide to Shop/ 214 – 21521st Century Guide to Life

While a large portion of China’s market is consumed by European brands, it is worth noting that a few brands with strong Chinese influence and style, such as Shanghai Tang, Vivienne Tam and Chine de Blanc, are now making their presence felt in the high streets of many established global metropolises. Vivienne Tam (2005) has often voiced her frustration with Chinese people’s neglect of their own culture when it comes to fashion and her disappointment that she had to leave her native Hong Kong to be appreciated on Fifth Avenue, New York. It is unfortunately true that many young Chinese think that driving a Mercedes in a Chanel dress with a Hermès Birkin bag slung on the passenger seat is much more chic than dressing in a qipao (also known as the cheongsam in Cantonese).1 It seems that Shanghai Tang and Vivienne Tam recognised the opportunity for marketing Chinese brands to western consumers, with the grand dream of standing shoulder to shoulder one day with international fashion houses in the Asian market. Will they succeed? Only time will tell.

Whether it is European brands or rising Chinese brands, shopping has become an addiction for many and it is now a leisure, cultural and entertainment activity in many emerging cities. Museums, libraries, airports and hospitals are becoming indistinguishable from shopping malls. All of the world’s humanities have been wrapped around consumption as the singular point of existence. This means that the retailing scene has undergone dramatic development since high street shopping and continues to shape consumer culture by embracing shopping and the mall as more than a necessity. China is undergoing these processes in a much shorter time period with shopping malls springing up overnight. Woods Bagot’s presence in mainland China is witnessing first-hand this rapid retail evolution. The stage is set for new retail strategies that are currently emulating western retail patterns, but pretty soon, the sheer volume of consumerism may render these principles obsolete. The following articles in this chapter begin to explore some of the factors that will influence the evolution of the Asian retail model and, thereafter, global retail patterns into the future.

China also poses contradictions in its consumption patterns. It has developed a reputation for being the largest consumer of genuine luxury goods, but at the same time it is the largest manufacturer and supplier of counterfeit luxury goods in the world (Okonkwo, 2007). China’s counterfeit industry is savvy and swift. It takes approximately fourteen hours from the official launch of a new model of Chanel sunglasses in Paris to be replicated and in the market for sale. China’s counterfeit industry is robust and sophisticated enough to produce not only fashion and textile items but also products such as cars that require complex engineering and manufacturing regimes. When Porsche released the limited edition of six cars for high-end clients, China’s counterfeit manufacturer managed to produce the seventh car of such stature. Chadha and Husband (2006) suggest that consumers, who have aspiration but not the means and are in the early ‘show off’ phase of their rising status and wealth, have been able to trial luxury brands by buying fakes. Invariably these customers upgrade to the real thing when finances allow. And ironically in Asia, fakes have assisted luxury brands by advertising to a much wider customer base, whetting their appetite for the real thing (Chadha & Husband, 2006). Is imitation truly the sincerest form of flattery?


Whether it is European brands or rising Chinese brands, shopping has become an addiction for many and it is now a leisure, cultural and entertainment activity in many emerging cities.


In Causeway Bay, while standing in orderly queues to visit the Island Beverly, (a five level food and beverage development situated above three levels of retail) piercing LED lights and multi point sound systems maintain interest and build a level of excited anticipation in guests that could only be bettered by waiting in a big dipper queue for twenty-five minutes whilst the cars roll past full of screaming heads.

The elevator doors open to be greeted by a load of satisfied diners ready to take the lift down, as sixteen new patrons take their place guided by smart uniformed concierges. The restaurants have offered menus on back-lit neon display boards in the ground floor lift lobby allowing pre-salivated selection of Sushi/Korean BBQ/café house/karaoke delights.

by Stephen Jones & Iris S Hwang

TREaSuRE

TowERS


In Asia, vertical retail developments are not a new concept. Today they are recognised as a unique class of development that provide high value restaurant, entertainment and retail opportunities to a strong entrepreneurial middle class of tenants, young mobile intrepid customers and agile developers.

Whether it’s Times Square and its seventeen levels of retail and food and beverage, Langham Place in Mong Kok (fifteen levels of retail and food and beverage), or Tung Ying Centre (designed by Woods Bagot, with twenty-three levels), vertical retailing and lifestyle developments are integral to the commercial and experiential networks that constitute our Asian cities vision high into the air.

Pace of developmentIn Hong Kong, people have become socialised

to above-ground living through forms of walled villages and shop house typologies where compaction and elevation of living and social activities are a norm. It can be argued that Hong Kong people showed less resistance towards densification and high above-ground living when it was coupled with the physical constraints of low land availability and severe shortage of housing stock pre and post Second World War.

The British Administrations and the operational policies developed for Hong Kong were overtly focused on free trade and ease of operation. In application and through the natural alignment of development players, the development climate morphed into two streams of scale: on one hand large aligned development players and on the other, multitudes of less active, small, sometimes older businesses and traders. It is this co-existence of the new and traditional trading modes in Hong Kong that gives the unique experience where large and small grains complement one another, as do old and new. Initially this might have been seen as a constraint where large scale development was given less freedom to restructure the city, and was inserted into the existing city fabric, as opposed to the clean canvas given to post-war European cities, which often had been significantly demolished to a great extent during the war, or American cities which simply have grown outwards on virgin land.

The ‘malling’ of Asian cities that developed at a frenzied pace during the 80s supported the retailing desires of the increasingly affluent middle aged consumers. Globally the mall concept has been supplanted in major city sites by the mixed used development. In high density cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul where populations have saturated the public space at ground level and the demand for more commercial space has driven land costs to dizzy heights, high value retail space has been inevitably forced up or down from ground level.

Successful internationally, commercial landmarks such as AOL Time Warner Centre in New York and Roppongi Hills Development in Tokyo are examples of a development model that spread risk functionally and vertically, providing flexibility and driving inner city living towards an integrated high density village lifestyle.

The impact these modern, high density developments have had on our cities around the world is immense. In contrast consider the reductive planning strategies of most European cities in the late 60s. Post-war developments based on needs and systematised structured development provided environments for urban life that ranged from satisfactory to diabolical, although pockets of resistance were sustained in areas of London such as Soho and Greenwich Village in New York. The vast majority of the white collared population were moving towards a lifestyle where they clearly separated their working life in the city from their residential suburban time at dusk. Cities were deserted at night just as ‘bed town’ suburbs were empty during the day, an immense opportunity lost to rationalised planning. Indeed, the pressure to capture the value of the CBD as an environment that supports a wider range of lifestyle and commercial functions encouraged mixed used developments in the 90s.

Always a trading nation, China (especially southern China and Hong Kong) has been a community of entrepreneurs. And it is in this mix of culture, density and development controls that retail models have developed innately.

Insert the high-risePerhaps due to the lack of large plots for the

western style malls, many of the shopping malls in Hong Kong are more like insertions within the urban fabric. Vast parking lots surrounding malls with a continuous procession of cars are beyond the realm of reality, at least in urban areas of Hong Kong. Instead, shopping malls are compact and tall. Therefore, Hong Kong’s model of a shopping mall as an insertion draws distinct contrast with its distant cousin, the North American ‘Big Box’ typology. As an insertion the Hong Kong model at least makes an attempt to respect the existing fabric and trading of the area. Of course, the inherent nature of an internalised mall is that it inevitably turns its back on the streets, in many cases destroying trade in the surrounding area, intentionally or unintentionally, and the example of surrounding clearing can be seen in some mall projects in Hong Kong such as Langham Place and Festival Walk. However, many malls in Hong Kong are designed to take advantage of existing high pedestrian flow and transport connections rather than killing off surrounding trades to create monopoly within the area. In Hong Kong, malls and small trades exist in interdependent relationship, and in this way, Hong Kong’s mall typology is physically and socially different from the Big Box typology.

Laforet Mall

Island Beverly

Perhaps due to the lack of large plots for the western style malls, many of the shopping malls in Hong Kong are more like insertions within the urban fabric. International

Finance Centre


In high density cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul where populations have saturated the public space at ground level and the demand for more commercial space has driven land costs to dizzy heights, high value retail space has been inevitably forced up or down from ground level.


Mega mallingHong Kong, of course, has its share of large

shopping malls, usually constructed on reclaimed or urban renewal sites, in other words, newly made or recently cleared amalgamated sites. International Finance Centre (IFC) is a typical example of a western style shopping mall on reclaimed land, filled with multinational high-end brands providing a luxurious shopping experience. It provides weather protected space, clad with Italian marble, with uniform organisation and strict by-laws dictated by a sophisticated owner/management body.

The mall developments in Hong Kong, including China Hong Kong City in Tuen Muen and Pacific Place in Admiralty, provide a range of middle to upper class retail destinations tuned to local market flow. These malls, based on the Big Box mall concept, mix tenants of international and regional chains who are able to support the rentals that derive from the cost of developing and operating such mega structures. In these models, the small traders, local design couples and fresh fashion design school prodigies are locked out of the shopfront retail market. This is not unusual in many cities of the world where the options to this group of retailers include Sunday markets, community sales and fashion festivals. Small traders and local designers have often been victims of the rising real estate market, where a strip once famous for such small, affordable and unique traders is transformed by more marketable shops and restaurants. Small shops with bare walls and the familiar hum of a sawing machine from the back of house are replaced by sleek but standardised interiors of corporate fashion houses and restaurants.

In Hong Kong and other mature Asian capitalist societies, a recreational shopping lifestyle has been increasingly supported by adolescents and 20-30 year olds with large discretionary spending power. High-end international fashion houses and boutiques, the term ironically used for today’s multi-national luxury brands, now dominate high-exposure shop fronts across the world. This global homogenisation of shopping culture removes localities and a surprise factor from shopping and travel experiences and these trends are spreading into China to satisfy the growing middle class with capitalist aspirations.

We are all familiar with walking into a mall in Europe or North America in search of souvenirs, only to be greeted by a majority of recognisable international brands; then through an extended search, picking up local-looking wares which turn out to be ‘Made in China’ brand. Concurrently there is a growing desire for the unique and local, which is in part driven by youth seeking individualism. This market seeks a broader creative base and lower priced sale items that are not accommodated by the chains of mega mall retailers. Within this context, there is a high demand for unique and more affordable items and this demand is now being accommodated in compact high-rise buildings with small shops and affordable rents. Hong Kong is genuinely embracing the smaller scale, more youth-oriented, emerging mall types, referred to here as ‘boutique malls’ which are widely successful in Tokyo and Seoul.

Enter the low priced, creative boutique mall Boutique malls are now recognised as a

legitimate element in a retail portfolio by local and increasingly, multinational investment funds. These developments fill the gap in the market between the city mall and the laneway bazaar with accessory stalls. Boutique developments provide a dense mix of unique design fashion, accessories and increasingly, home wares. They are characterised by labyrinthine circulation, richly varied arcades and a sense of hustle and bustle. Location, as with all retail, is especially important for a boutique mall as the attraction to the centre is indelibly linked to the energy and direct access from public transport required by the predominantly young customer base.

When entering Laforet, a major shopping district in Causeway Bay, one can expect total experience (Figure 1). Three young girls dressed in angel costumes, complete with fluffy wings, greet customers with smiles and remind them not to neglect shops on the ground floor. Upon entering, one is pleasantly surprised at the seemingly chaotic arrangement and experience of being transformed from one shop to another, varying in size from 100 to 250 square feet. As one passes the threshold into one of these tiny shops, the aroma of a shopkeeper’s lunch mingling with air freshener fills one’s lungs providing a feeling of liberation from conformity and uniformity of the strictly controlled malls. Unlike shops in IFC, names of shops are difficult to be found or sometimes not even displayed, the majority relying on the tenancy number as a method of identification.

For customers, a multilevel boutique mall with hundreds of outlets provides a rich destination to socialise, browse, meet and buy unique, accessibly priced clothes and accessories from designers and independent manufacturers. In Hong Kong, young professionals travel long distances just to shop and browse at Causeway Bay’s ‘Island Fashion’ (which includes a six floor shop specialising in jewellery made of car tyres) on a lazy Saturday afternoon. This sense of discovery is a strong drawcard for many customers who feel a sense of place associated with the store or products. In a part of the world where local knowledge is powerful, this is a strong attractor to developing a brand association amongst a valued customer base.

Developments with tenancy sizes as small as sixty square feet are strong single point destinations for customers and provide an alternative to large mall management models. As many of the retailers are unestablished and young, the leases are often low or involve staggered deposits and short termination periods. Cost of a retail unit is often measured on unit cost rather than the cost per square foot or metre. This reflects the economics of the traders fine weekly margins as opposed to calculated percentage profits. Advertised rental prices for shops varying in size of 60–170 square feet in CTMA Tower in Mong Kok are between HKD 5000 to 8800 per month including management fees and utilities (Figure 2). This provides a low entry level for a prospective retail tenant and flexibility to managers to replace non-trading tenants in order to maintain the activity level of the centre.

Figure 2. CTMA Tower rentals, Mong KokFigure 1. Laforet Mall, Hong Kong Figure 4. Competing for attentionFigure 3. Micro retail


These centres normally require a lower capital investment in fitout costs as each tenant would normally be provided with walk-in tenancy including shopfront, ventilation system and shared amenities. Some shops use one corner of a shop for storage purposes and some new boutique malls, CTMA Towers in Mong Kong for example, use shared fitting room facilities in toilets to maximise every square foot of tenancy. This reduces entry level costs and initial leasing of the centre tremendously.

As boutique malls are more accepted in the market as low-risk and viable retail options, more and more of them are appearing in the major shopping districts of Causeway Bay, Mong Kok and Wanchai.

Micro mallsYou thought a 100 square foot shop was

small. Enter the ‘micro-malls’ where a 100 square foot store can hold another 100 sub-stores. Often called consignment, this is a very new retail model where individuals can rent small boxes (approximately 30 x 30 x 30 cm) to display and sell items, either hand-made goods or those imported on a small scale from neighbouring countries such as Japan (Figure 3). These boxes are attended by one, or at a maximum, two shopkeepers who assist shoppers. As for all retail models the most important determinant for rental is location, location, location. Box stores are stacked to about 190 cm high where boxes visible from the corridor are the most expensive at HKD 1500 per month and boxes within the store at low level can be as affordable as HKD 300 per month inclusive of utilities, shopkeeping and even basic book-keeping services. This provides an even easier entry level for retailers removing the burden of lease, legal business registration and risks associated with small business.

Within the confines of the box, each tenant is allowed freedom to design and fit out their mini shop. Hong Kong people’s fascination with miniature items can easily be encountered as these micro-malls often stock all kinds of ‘mini-me’ items including mini pot plants (real, not artificial), mini fridges for one can of drink, miniature cakes and figurines of every imaginable cartoon character. A simple rotation of the head allows shoppers to browse through ten very different stores with many shades of colour and excitement. This chaotic and eclectic collection of items attracts plenty of shoppers and micro-malls have become must-have shops for boutique malls.

You thought a 100 square foot shop was small. Enter the ‘micro-malls’ where a 100 square foot store can hold another 100 sub-stores.

Vertical dining experienceVertical shopping is not restricted to retail.

Although the size of tenancy may be much larger, vertical shopping is also widely relevant to the dining culture of Hong Kong. Where a floor space may be shared by fifty shops, these spaces on numerous floors above are shared by 1–3 restaurants offering international cuisine. The Island Beverly diners mentioned at the beginning are entertained while waiting for elevators to transport them to their delicious destination eight levels above. These street-less restaurants must provide sufficient channels of effective communication to attract potential diners, so usually employ flyers, banners on the street, signage on building facades and menus in elevator foyers (Figure 4). A newer form of communication, the internet, informs and directs potential diners to these hidden treasures as well. Amateur food critic forums on the internet have an incredible amount of influence on people’s dining patterns in Hong Kong.

No one would argue that Hong Kong is one of the highest density cities in the world, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok being one of the epicentres of extreme density. In this reclaimed land area of Causeway Bay, residential, retail and food and beverage outlets are stacked tooth and jowl, elevating the leasing value of this region to one of the highest in the world.

In these areas where retail trading particularly impacts leasing values at the lower floors of a development, the upper levels become the domain of food and beverage. The concentration of population and activities in a mall clearly supports restaurants of all scales from noodle bars to mega, multi-level karaoke clubs. The food and beverage market is in such demand that some developments are created simply as high-rise food and beverage destinations. For example, Hoi Ping Road Entertainment Centre (Figure 5), designed by Woods Bagot, is a twenty-five storey development with 5640 square metres of floor area providing bars, clubs, karaoke and restaurants from top to bottom. The development is an ant farm study in nightlife.

ConclusionThe vertical development of commercial

landscapes is made possible in communities where agile and competitive tenants are able to effectively draw dense populations using media and communications to deliver customers to their doorstep. Hong Kong is experiencing the journey upwards to shops and restaurants high above the ground and millions of customers are making the trip.

The elevator doors open at each floor, providing a five second glance at the shops and restaurants beckoning, giving customers as good a taste and context of the possibilities inside as they’d catch strolling along a traditional shopping district’s high street.

The excitement of arriving at one’s destination floor is as sweet as devouring a favourite dessert after a much anticipated wait. And vertical retail is just getting tastier.

Figure 5. Hoi Ping Road, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot

MallThea-Trics

by Mathilde Lucas

21st Century Guide to Shop/ 228 – 229

The key questions we ask ourselves as architects when designing a mall are based on different criteria and exigencies that need to satisfy both the developers and the customers: they can be economical, geographical, material and aesthetic. Public expectations of malls have also risen regarding ease of travel, greater access and compelling advertising. Therefore the possibilities for designing a shopping centre are varied and infinite.

Retail can be easily paralleled to theatre: if a performance is bad, audiences don’t come back; similarly if a retail offering is poor, shoppers end up defecting to alternative shopping destinations. This paper examines the ‘Aesthetic and Experience’ factor, demonstrating how the components of a mall’s design are as influential to a retail experience as those of a stage set to a theatrical performance.

The purchasing experienceMore than ever, retail is now an experience

rather than a simple business transaction as it was, say, fifty years ago. Nowadays, going to a mall contains additional aspects of interaction, entertainment, knowledge sharing and teaching, making the visiting experience sometimes even more compelling than the purchase itself.

Influencing the experience are many factors including the aesthetics, the location, the layout itself and the tenant mix. There is not one sole design method for attracting consumers, because not only can a mall be attractive due to its cultural and contextual aesthetics but because it may be different, modern, shocking, dramatic or festive. A theatre stage, with its lighting studies, calculated sounds and movements on stage, will influence and capture the spectator’s attention towards where you want them to look. In a similar way, the general circulation design of a mall also plays an essential part of the experience as it dictates what you want the shopper to purchase, where you want to lead the shopper and how long you want to keep the shopper inside. These days though, the layouts cannot remain too permanent as customers are increasingly more demanding and impatient, and get bored quickly. Good pedestrian flow accompanying a layout results in a variety of configurations with retail loops characterised by translucent galleries. These galleries stimulate pedestrians to move through the mall by providing unobstructed sightlines and pathways. Malls present in a diversity of configurations, the most popular being a circular mall (to avoid crowds) and a centralised mall that encourages a crowd into the central entertainment space.

Strong, spectacular and dramatic concepts offer precise orientation to the customer (Figure 1). To keep them interested and to encourage high spending, the experience has to keep a certain degree of flexibility and allow for sequential enticements throughout the various public spaces—especially for the young market, whose preferences are unpredictable and fast changing.


Theatre Retail


The atrium is a stage Like a stage, an atrium is the predominant

space, always located in strategic central locations where the heart of the action happens. Its volumetry and events (temporary exhibits, shows and ever changing features) bring a feeling of space and light similar to theatrical backdrops that adapt to different stories. Indeed, lights are dramatic elements on the building structure, to illuminate as a whole or to focalise on certain areas or activities. They enhance design elements and give life to the space just as stage lighting operates in theatres (Figure 2).

Finishes and themes costume a spaceThemes are basic elements that create a

festive atmosphere inside the shopping centre and can be inspired from the district’s special features, the landscape or a special event. The use of modern materials such as glass, timber or iron can create interesting contrasts and a theatrical background in the mall. Themes may be added and integrated as temporary or permanent tattoos on the building structure to light it up or bring some variety: western or eastern styles, resort themed interiors, aquatic concepts or historic period designs are just a few examples amongst many costumes. The addition of accessories and amenities can also be entertaining and may match the theme: ornamented bulkheads, showcases, toboggans, water shows, landscape elements, theme related graphics, sculptures and art work etc. (Figure 3–7).

However, developers in China are increasingly reticent to go for over the top, heavy themes and strong colour palettes as they requested ten years ago in malls such as Hong Kong’s Maritime Square designed by Woods Bagot (Figure 8). The Maritime was costumed by many aquatic gimmicks and naval features. These strong themes will date easier in the long term and are harder to maintain. Today, developers opt for more classic long-lasting designs with neutral backgrounds and light colours. Indeed, when Woods Bagot was asked to re-position Miramar shopping mall in Hong Kong recently, the rich textures, dark floorings and classical ornamentation features were replaced with light, bright finishes creating a sense of space and an overall contemporary feeling.

Interaction Retail environments and merchandising

displays are designed with signature looks that are incorporated into each new store or public area to enhance brand image and communicate to customers. As today’s consumer relies on strong features and image recognition more than ever, retail designs are increasingly provocative, eye-catching and exciting which entices the customer to look, touch and ultimately, buy. Indeed, some current trends focus on hi-tech features in key areas to create a destabilising and interactive environment to capture people’s attention and even provoke them. These can include: LED displays, censored projections, multimedia screens, and simulation experiences. Revolutionary designs with a futuristic flair and the creative use of interactive electronic technology have contributed to a sense of constant evolution.

The retail experience can also be an educational one. Some sports shops have performance stages where the shopper can visualise the effect of accessories and they can receive a full instructive explanation of the sport. For example, located in the central portion of the ‘Lining’ sports shop in Beijing there is an elevated platform with a large full height digital screen to one side simulating different sports alongside the sports equipment on sale. For example, on screen a skier may be pelting down a slope while a pair of skis and boots moves in sync on the moving platform allowing customers to imagine themselves in action. With the Olympics fast approaching in Beijing, these retail outlets are going to the extreme in terms of sports merchandising and other promotional events inside malls.

It is important that these hi-tech features are properly balanced with good customer service. Service remains the key to both today’s and tomorrow’s success: human interaction and communication with a personal touch is irreplaceable.

1 Langham Place ‘The Cavern’, Kowloon, Hong Kong

2 Burjamah Atrium, Dubai3 Elements ‘Fire Zone’,

Kowloon, Hong Kong

4 Vivo City, ‘Organic theme’, Singapore

5 Green Belt ‘Indoor/Outdoor’, Manila, Philippines

6 Venus Fort ‘Las Vegas Mall’, Odaiba, Japan

7 Bamboo Garden, Ueno, Japan

8 Maritime Square, Kowloon, Hong Kong

9 Harvey Nichols, Hong Kong

10 IFC2, Central, Hong Kong11 Plaza 353, Atrium view with

glass DJ booth, Shanghai

1

2 5

8

9

10

11

6

7

3

4


For example this occurred in Hong Kong’s Pacific Place in 2006, when the cinema was removed temporarily during renovation and Marks and Spencer left creating pressure on the remaining tenants. Smaller local tenancies, which complement anchor tenants, are also essential in maintaining repeat business to their neighbours. These tenants, operating a ‘host and guest’ approach, are essential to the mall’s spectacular experience and the new customer exigencies. In IFC2, Hong Kong (Figure 10) for instance, the large fashion store Zara was located next to two large anchors City Supermarket store and IFC cinema, helping to successfully activate the entire retail zone, mixing food, fashion and entertainment.

The audienceRetail spaces must be designed for the

different types of groups in a community. All customers have different expectations and requirements so it is necessary to define the type of communities the mall is targeting to conceive a place of value. For example, when Woods Bagot was commissioned to design Plaza 353 (Figure 11) and reposition this heritage Art Deco building into a modern retail mall in the heart of Shanghai’s busy Nanjing Road, thorough market research was done together with the client’s leasing and marketing team. The outcome of the study was to target a young and urban population for which the design team had the difficult task to introduce trendy, urban features in an Art Deco structure, such as a large DJ booth glass box in the middle of the atrium. This type of feature addresses the youth market sector’s entertainment needs and revamps the heritage building into a trendy shopping centre.

For a mall to reel in a repeated audience as regulars, customers need to enjoy what is familiar, while experiencing twists, unexpected features and events. The shopper who becomes a spectator guest needs to remember next week what he saw yesterday.

Closing actRetail outlets and shopping malls of tomorrow

will definitively offer more than just the product itself. As competition in the design field becomes tighter and consumers more demanding in terms of their shopping experience, visual entertainment experience will play a crucial role. Shopping, like going to an exhibition or a theatre performance, will become a productive, exciting and cultural moment.

Enter stage right: The tenantsWhilst the theatre scene hosts celebrated

actors, shopping malls have their brands—Prada, McDonalds, Benetton, Zara, Nike, who are all doing their own performance. In Hong Kong today, the consumer is confronted with a vast array of choices on a daily basis and shops like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, created by international designers, have a very strong identity and influence (Figure 9).

The key step to staging a successful show is to find the right tenant mix that understands the target market. Studying population, needs, trends, spending powers and age groups is imperative. Being in contact with the brokerage community and knowing the potential competitors in the area is the best way to stay alert for new retailers emerging on the market and for those who are disappearing. The tenant mix is oriented more towards combined shoppers interests rather than products. Their location should differentiate from the old department store format which is somewhat predictable with cosmetics on the ground floor, ladies fashion on the first floor and household goods on the upper floors. Customers enjoy more variety and originality, for instance, in Hong Kong’s New Town Plaza redesigned by Woods Bagot, a music shop was strategically added in the middle of a floor full of restaurants, allowing people waiting for a table to browse the music compilations. Progressively, floor tenancies in malls are leaning towards supermarkets and services in basements usually with a large bookshop; flagship fashion and lifestyle on the ground floor; ladies fashion accessories, male fashion and sports on the lower and mid floors, with cafes in some locations; households and/or electronics on the higher floors in cohabitation with entertainment, leisure and food and beverage. A good tenant mix distribution must remain recognisable and easy to negotiate but should still be capable of surprise.

Are there good and bad actors? Big money makers such as entertainment or

software are usually considered to be very good tenants who can handle higher rents, whilst tenants that pay less rent or may require renovation must be closely monitored with their reputation and the appeal they generate. Aside from fashion and lifestyle tenants, large regional retail destinations are increasingly offering extra side-acts to encourage a long stay for spectators: catering facilities (fast food, kiosks, vending machines, restaurants, food courts) and leisure and entertainment facilities (cinemas, health clubs, bowling alleys, theatre and music venues, ski resorts, swimming pools). The key actor is the anchor tenant (a department, large size or flagship store) and is generally integral to the success of a shopping centre as it will determine what kind of stores will fill out the smaller spaces. They are a landmark for the customer and create stability for the retail centre. Choosing the right anchor is vital because if the lead actor quits business, it can be critical for the shopping centre.

The cities...Olympian CityHarbour CityUniversal CitySunshine City

The plazas...New Town PlazaSky PlazaMetro PlazaMultiplazaPlaza 353

The squares...Maritime SquareTimes SquareFashion Square

The statements...Elements Megabox

Blue Water Laqua

Green Belt

The centres...Eaton Centre

Palisades CentreDiagonal Mar Centre

The countries...Mall of America

The Siam ParagonMall of The EmiratesKing of Prussia Mall

Mall of Asia

What’s in a name

Retail of the futuReYongxin Mall case studYby Jason Marriott & Omid Ferdowsian


Following in the footsteps of Hong Kong and Japan, mainland China is becoming a super power of consumerism. Consumers are becoming more aware and tastes are becoming global and avant-garde almost overnight. Unlike the west, modern Chinese consumers are arguably more willing to accept new design styles, fashions and trends and have an unbridled willingness to experiment with aesthetics. This phenomenon is a result of moving from global insulation for many years to now living in a more open country. Exposure to off shore influences is making the Chinese consumer hungry for all that is modern and new. China is embarking on the same rags-to-riches journey that Hong Kong and Japan have already been through, the only difference is that China has a population and economic critical mass that could make the small islands of Hong Kong and Japan pale into insignificance.

As a result, retail developments are being built throughout China to cater to a range of emerging markets. They are influenced by cost, rising wealth, improved transportation, brand awareness and competition and formats include: convenience centres, hypermarkets, department stores, lifestyle centres, factory outlet malls, big box superstores, power centres and mega malls. The traditional approach to the design of retail centres and malls depends on trends, markets and benchmarking, and the chosen model often reflects the level of market maturity and the element of risk a developer is willing to take. The Yongxin mixed use development in Qingdao is an example of a retail development that has taken a North American retail model and adapted it to respond to the context and location of this developing city.

QingdaoQingdao is a coastal city that will host the

2008 Olympic sailing events and it holds a reputation in China as a beautiful city with clean air due to is geographical distance away from the country’s manufacturing cities. As an important port city Qingdao is a gateway for China’s import and export industry with container after container entering and leaving the country keeping the economic engines of China purring. This, along with a larger middle class than most Chinese cities and a growing tourist trade, has made Qingdao a prosperous city. This is clearly demonstrated by housing prices in some areas now fetching upwards of CNY33 000 per square metre, which is comparable to premium developments in both Beijing and Shanghai. It is within this emerging market that Woods Bagot was commissioned to design the Yongxin Plaza development in what will be Qingdao’s third commercial centre.

Due to an increase in population in line with the rapid urbanisation throughout China, Qingdao has evolved from its traditional city centre, once colonised by the Germans, into a series of adjacent commercial centres. This is different from the traditional trend of city evolution where the city heralds from a central core and grows outwards in a radial manner. The Yongxin Plaza has been designed by Woods Bagot to be the centrepiece of the third commercial centre of Qingdao, which will be the most modern and picturesque. This area is emerging to be a cultural hub for Qingdao with a new exhibition centre, state of the art opera house and five central open public plazas. Framed by the beautiful Laoshan mountain range this new CBD area sits in a flat basin that extends down to a coastal plaza connecting into a public realm edge that wraps around the entire Qingdao peninsula.

Responding to locationWoods Bagot’s brief for the 246 000 m2 project

was to create a landmark development consisting of a commercial tower (140 m) and two serviced apartment towers (120 m and 80 m) all sitting on top of 68 000 m2 of retail space extending from the first basement level upwards into a four storey podium. The development plans to address the premium end of the local market, and be robust enough to make a profitable return for the developer. Based on this, Woods Bagot’s approach was to implement a time tested and proven North American style retail mall approach, considerably different to the vertical retail solutions of Hong Kong and Japan. In this approach strong axial malls were established that address and align with existing major pedestrian movement patterns surrounding the site. These malls work across the project site to bring people into the development, stimulating retail spending while also activating internal and external public spaces. Fundamental to locating these malls was the need for a detailed understanding of existing populations and traffic flows. This was an early study conducted by Woods Bagot that was instrumental in shaping the final design response.

As the Yongxin development site sits adjacent to the new Qingdao Opera House with a major public open space precinct situated in between, these malls create short cuts for pedestrians to move in between attractions. Woods Bagot considered the open space between the Yongxin site and the Opera House as integral to the overall design solution, and was commissioned to the merit of the developer to generate a scheme that reflects an integrated masterplan response. This is in contrast to a ‘wedding cake’ style design response—where a development sits on a site without consideration of the broader urban context—that for many years has been common place in China as well as other parts of the world.

Working in collaboration with Aspect landscape architects from Sydney, Woods Bagot generated an overall scheme that engages with the surrounding urban fabric. The result adds value to the area shaping people’s movements, activating building edges, public spaces, and giving back to city, rather than being an internalised insertion with a lifeless perimeter.

Qingdao is a coastal city that will host the 2008

Olympic sailing events and it holds a reputation

in China as a beautiful city with clean air due to is

geographical distance away from the country’s

manufacturing cities.


Design and planning innovationsUsing the built and tested Time Warner

building in New York, IFC2 in Hong Kong and the Mori Roppongi Hills development of Tokyo as case studies, the design response for Yongxin was shaped and tailored to introduce an international design edge tailored for the local market. Based on this, and understanding the value of retail space in the current Qingdao market, a robust retail planning solution was established early. An early solution also enabled suitable locations for the commercial and serviced apartment towers sitting above the retail to be identified such that premium retail space was maximised. Cores, structure and services to be implemented above the retail components were strategically guided through lower yielding retail areas such as the department store space and supermarket, while mall facing shops were maximised. This to a large extent, combined with an understanding of the urban context, drove the project massing and design outline. Generous malls, three-storey glazed entry volumes and double height shop fronts were introduced to bring the generosity of space one would expect of a premium development.

The design also has an infrastructure that is capable of being refurbished as required to suit market sophistication and city maturity over time. This will run in line with the growth of the city, increased spending power of the consumer base, and demand for better quality environments.

In the earliest stages of the design, Woods Bagot paid considerable attention to the service vehicle circulation, including the rationalisation of entry points, turning configurations, loading dock approaches and goods handling, an area often left to later stages of the design process. This early consideration of the servicing strategy resulted in a rationalised basement arrangement that informed above ground design work. This greatly helped with the overall planning solution by defining locations for lifts, escalators, fire escapes, structure, and services. Importantly it saved design time in later stages by having critical functional aspects resolved sufficiently enough to intelligently inform the above ground planning. This highlights the importance of a sequential design process that addresses complicated and difficult yet critical design aspects early rather than placing them on hold for later resolution.

Entry points of mixed use developments are major areas to resolve within the context of the overall masterplan. The ‘address’ for each component needs clear definition to avoid mixing of development users, and to ensure each component is appropriately presented on the streetscape. Not only should the mixing of shoppers, residents, office workers and servicing be avoided, but the address of each component should be appropriate. This is to say the office component will need a strong corporate streetscape presentation, retail entry points will need to be clearly identifiable and welcoming, and residential entries will need to be exclusive but not hidden.

A surrounding street analysis to determine hierarchies is key to the definition of entry points and component addresses. In Yongxin the office tower was given an exclusive streetscape with large open plaza space. The retail entries adopted three-storey high glass entry atriums that have a strong street presence yet are heavily integrated into the podium design response. Meanwhile the residential entries are clearly exposed yet placed a sufficient distance away from the other entries to avoid residents mixing with other development users. Importantly the main service vehicle entries have been removed from the primary streetscapes and placed in a purposefully designed service road within the site.

Design expressionThe proximity of the coastal edge influenced

the overall design by expressing the way water erodes stone surfaces into natural terraces. This stepping language, held together with a framework of 1500 mm control lines, is metaphorical with the way notes are held on a music stave. The rationale for the 1500 mm control lines is to establish an architectural order that conforms with buildability issues such as maximum material sizes and structural grid spacing. These 1500 mm control lines were applied in plan and in elevation to locate all aspects of the design whilst giving enough compositional freedom to play with materiality and architectural patterning. The modular logic also enabled the design response to cater for numerous changes during the design development whilst maintaining the architectural aesthetic.

Retail of the futureRetail developments are being built

throughout China to cater to a range of emerging markets. Whilst more traditional approaches to the design of retail centres have been employed and adapted by developers as seen in Yongxin, we predict that new models are on the horizon. As consumerism becomes embedded in our culture and way of life, many aspects of work, hospitality, play and education are blending into a single, uniform pattern of urban habitation. As a result, the retailing scene is undergoing dramatic development and China is in a position to shape global consumer culture of the future.

A study of consumption habits in six major Chinese cities found that food took up the highest percentage of consumption, followed by education, culture and entertainment (Kang, 2005). Clothing came close to last. This study points to new possibilities for integrating other usually overlooked consumption categories such as education and/or training into shopping malls. Reconstructing traditional market boundaries this way is the basis of the Blue Ocean marketing strategy developed by W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

The basic philosophy to sustain high performance in an overcrowded market is to develop uncontested market space, eliminating competition (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). And there are two ways to do this. One is to launch into completely new industries but the other is to expand the boundaries of the existing industry as eBay has done with online auctions and Ikea has done with their innovative production, service and pricing strategy. Design should not be under-estimated in its ability to differentiate the offering between competing retail centres in the future.

The proximity of the coastal edge influenced the overall design by expressing

the way water erodes stone surfaces into natural terraces.

Yongxin Mall, Qingdao, China. Designed by Woods Bagot


Why do architects and designers often have difficulty realising the strength of their original design ideas? There is often a disconnect between beautifully rendered illustrations and completed work, which is largely due to the lack of consideration given to natural light and lighting. Interiors often end up bathed in uniform light which, while satisfying guides for illumination levels, rob the space of life and energy. To some extent architects have it easier, the natural light is more predictable in the way it shapes and reveals exteriors. However, despite access to a plethora of modern materials these days, there is no shortage of unengaging static architecture. It takes skill and experience to be able to capture the depth, detail and vibrancy that natural light has the potential to evoke for an exterior. To a certain extent designers are put off by the technical jargon and confused by the variety of light sources and fittings available today. This article serves as a practical and visual guide. Drawing on project experience it highlights implications for the spatial and material choices that lighting designers typically need to deal with.

by Omid Ferdowsian and Tewa SirilaklangA visuAl journey through retAil lighting

As is often the case the solution to a problem can come from questioning what we take for granted and viewing it from a different perspective. Consider how our eyes perceive form and space. When we look at a building our brains synthesise a range of visual cues and previous experience to interpret the shape before us. But imagine seeing a building not as a fixed form but as a collection of surfaces that define, appear, dissolve or blur under different light conditions. Interior spaces can similarly be viewed as volumes that expand, contract and flow under different lighting. With this vision materials are no longer fixed surfaces and colours, but matrices that can appear, reflect, glow, luminesce, when they interact with light. We will explore some of these qualities of light and its perception and interactions with materials.

To focus the discussion we examine lighting in the context of the retail experience. As a lifestyle activity retail provides increasingly important settings in our urban environments. Take a walk down some of the more fashionable city streets, such as Tokyo’s Ginza district, and you can see the role lighting plays in innovative retail branding (Figure 1).

700Wavelength (nm)

Sensitivity

600 500 400


Design elementsOur perceptions of qualities of edge, plane, mass and volume are measurably influenced by the direction, distance and intensity of a light source to its subject (Linton, 1985, p. 5).

Our perception of space and form is an interesting assimilation between the optical stimuli our eyes pick up and the cognitive overlay of what our unconscious mind interprets—in other words, visual perception is related to our previous experiences and expectations of what we will see. Our eyes detect contrast in field of vision which we perceive as tones, and which together with our past experience, gives rise to our ability to read spaces. Brighter illumination increases our perception of detail, colour and increases the sharpness of an image, therefore increasing the perception of space around an object—this is achieved by the pupil becoming smaller and the photoreceptors (cones) that perceive colour becoming activated (C. Lim, interview with ophthalmologist, November 12, 2007). Conversely dim illumination gives us the perception of receding space. The understanding of this principle has been applied in the fine arts throughout history. Spaces on the canvas and in architecture can be woven together or flow one to the other by the way light is projected.

Light has illusory properties: it may expand or diminish space, anoint a simple plane or create a sense of solidity (Hart, 1984, p. 22).

When light enters a material it similarly expands the inner range of tones, making brighter elements come forward and darker elements recede. This tension between light, dark and depth gives material the perception of vitality and illuminance. It gives alabaster its vibrancy and Carrara marble its luminous depth.

Our mind is used to looking for edges and patterns on surfaces. There is a certain comfort in viewing rhythm and patterns of light and dark. When strong light washes away edges or disrupts the depth cues our mind expects to see, we become intrigued, aroused or even disoriented.

Colour perception is also formed from a similar disparity between the visual messages received versus how our brains interpret those messages based on previous experience. Our eye does not see the colour spectrum evenly, being more sensitive towards particular wavelengths in the visible range—each set of photoreceptors react only to a range of wavelengths and is one of the reasons we cannot perceive ultraviolet or infrared light (C. Lim, interview with ophthalmologist, November 12, 2007). The brain interprets combinations of wavelengths as particular colours (Figure 2) (Marsh, 2007).

For reasons that are not completely understood colours that appear next to each other on the colour wheel relax the eye and create calm. In contrast complementary colours of the same tone seem to compete for attention in our minds giving an impression of vibrancy, where the eye is not able to rest on one or the other (Linton, 1985; Morton, 2007). Figure 3 a and b demonstrate this phenomenon.

A related phenomenon known as colour consistency causes the brain with experience of similar settings to expect to see a particular colour, even under different light sources. This explains why the eye is so good at adapting to different lighting conditions. The camera is much less forgiving; hence the problem photographers often face photographing interiors illuminated by different light sources.

From concept to realisationUnderstanding the synthesis of vision and

cognition can help us to create a range of emotions in our spaces: arousal, tension, intrigue, calm and relaxation. For interior retail spaces rhythm and focus are important. Rhythm of brighter and dimmer areas along the path of movement can create a sense of relaxation (Figure 4b). This can be as simple as applying regular accent lighting, illuminating floor or wall surfaces. Brighter spaces at the end of sight lines visually contract spaces by bringing the distant space closer and providing a sense of anticipation (Figure 4c).

Lighting alone can be the feature of a space or it can be used to reinforce the design hierarchy. Whichever the approach it is the central component to celebrate entrances, key spaces, circulation and mood creation.

The use of natural light in retail environments, though very welcomed by shoppers, is not always possible everywhere. Natural light is desirable not just because it is more calming and provides a natural rendering of materials, but because it also connects us with temporal information. By constantly changing, the fluidity of natural light gives us a sense of time. Figures 5a–d demonstrate different examples of lighting application.

Technical realisationThe technical realisation of lighting design is

based on a few key ideas which we will introduce briefly. These are settings and scenes, lighting levels, light sources, technical tools and details.

Settings and scenesSettings are created by lighting designers

conducting concept planning, which usually includes identifying different zones and specific features (Figure 6).

Scenes refer to particular combinations of lighting within particular settings. One particular setting may be programmed for a number of different scenes with lighting effects that can evoke mood and change over time (Figure 7).

Figure 1a. Dior in Ginza, Tokyo Figure 1b. Dior in Ginza, Tokyo Figure 1c. LV in Ginza, Tokyo. Figure 2. Sensitivity to colour wavelengths

Figure 3a. Colours adjacent on the colour wheel create less differentiation to the eye

Figure 3b. Colours with complementary tone create vibrancy


Lighting levels: IlluminanceIlluminance refers to the amount of light

striking a unit area of surface, usually the floor, wall or a work surface. Often referred to as lux levels, this is not to be confused with the brightness of a surface which is called luminance. Brightness of a surface refers to the amount of light reflecting off it also known as the reflectance of the material. Generally visual efficiency increases with increased illumination as fine detail is much easier to distinguish. However not all tasks need the same level of visual detail so studies of illumination have lead to the development of international and national standards for effective illumination values of various tasks. We have compiled a general guide to lux levels in various retail settings (Table 1).

While these lux levels can be used as a general guide they have to be adjusted for physiological factors such as the perceived exclusivity of the mall shops as well as technical issues like the colour and reflectivity of the materials used. Shopping malls with more exclusive retailer brands tend to have reduced lighting levels to encourage exclusivity and mood, while shopping malls with more mass market appeal have higher lighting levels to give the impression of spaciousness, health and cleanliness. Lux levels typically change from the entrance areas through the arcade and to open atrium spaces. They increase significantly at the shopfronts and displays, to attract attention to the products on display.

Technical tools and getting the details rightThe technical tools available to lighting

designers include fittings, optics and louvres. The right fitting will ensure correct distribution of light to avoid glare and achieve the desired spread. Optics can be used to focus the light for effect. Louvres most commonly seen in studio lighting give additional and adjustable glare control. Other tools like filters can block out particular colours and reduce glare. Gobo filters have patterns cut into them which cast patterns of light on to surfaces; these can be used to create moving light projections.

Glare reduction is the key issue in retail lighting, and if not controlled can lead to visual clutter which reduces visibility and increases discomfort. Glare arises from reflections off surfaces like glass or from poor choice of reflectors in light fittings. One way to avoid it in typical arcades is to have indirect lighting in the form of light coves. This can also provide a softer more relaxed visual environment.

Shops and displaysDisplays and shopfronts are generally

illuminated brighter than arcades to draw attention to them (Figure 8). Issues of visibility and prominence of the shop branding come in to play. Displays work best when there is more than sixty per cent contrast between the focus of the display and the background. A high colour rendering index is also important so that the display items look right. Most lighting is track mounted and out of sight so that it can be adjusted to suit changing displays. Exterior display windows often have two sets of lighting, par lamps to focus on the display and metal halides that come on at night to raise the background illumination. In supermarkets fresh food displays also typically have twin lighting sets—high level general illumination with high CRI fluorescent lamps in combination with incandescent or halogen shaded lamps at a distance of 1.5–2 m from the produce. Product displays on shelves or in display cases typically use hidden fluorescent halogen or LED lighting. This is as an efficient way to increase the visibility of the product while reducing glare and overall visual clutter.

Figure 5a. Entrance statement: Sino Land’s Vision City shopping mall, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods BagotFigure 5b. Mood creation: Restaurant at Fortune Plaza, Beijing. Designed by Woods BagotFigure 5c. Circulation: Sogo Department Store, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot.Photographer: Ulso TsangFigure 5d. Key spaces: Vicwood Plaza, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods BagotFigure 5e. Walking street in Paradise Walk East Shopping Mall, Chongqing China. Designed by Woods Bagot

5a

5b 5c

5d 5e

Lux level Retail location Suggested light sources

50 lux Car parks and store rooms Fluorescents, LV sodium lamps, HV sodium lamps

100 lux Corridors and stairs Fluorescents

200 lux Lifts and lift lobbies Halogens and indirect fluorescents

200–500 lux Shopping centre circulation Indirect fluorescent coves, compact fluorescents, par lamps

400 lux Enquiry desks and counters Halogens and par lamps

300–500 lux Night time exterior display windows Par lamps and metal halides

600 lux Task lighting and supermarkets Fluorescents, par lamps, metal halides

800 lux Fashion shops and department stores Par lamps and metal halides

900–1000 lux Supermarket displays, fruit and meat Par lamps and metal halides

800–1000 lux Mall entrances Daylight and metal halides

1200 lux Jewellery displays Halogens, LED, fibre optics

1500–2500 lux Day time exterior display windows Daylight

Figure 6a. Lighting setting: Concept plan, Plaza Romania Bucharest. Image reproduced with permission by LDPi Edinburgh

Figure 6b & 6c. Plaza Romania BucharestImages reproduced with permission by LDPi Edinburgh

6a

6b 6c

Light sources: Colour rendering and colour temperature

The colour rendering index (CRI) is a scale of 0–100 that refers to how well a light source reproduces colour for the eye. Sunlight and daylight have the best rendering at CRI 100, while LEDs which emit light in a very narrow band of wavelengths, have very low indexes. A typical yellow coloured street lamp which uses the low pressure sodium lamp has a CRI of 0. Interestingly typical fluorescent lamps have had a reputation for poor colour rendering at around CRI 60, however recently, coatings with rare earth phosphor technology have produced lamps that have a CRI of 95, almost as good as daylight. Some lighting standards also recommend adjusting the CRI values in conjunction with the task required.

Colour temperature is a numerical measure expressed in the unit kelvin (K) which is used to distinguish the quality of light from different sources. Light with high colour temperature (5000–7000) tends to increase a sense of tension while low colour temperatures (1500–2000K) tend to have relaxing effects. Higher colour temperatures also tend to have better rendering of cooler colour finishes such as blues and greens, while lower temperatures render warmer colours (including timbers) better. Table 2 is a guide to colour temperatures recommended for different settings.

Figure 4a. No rhythm, no focus Table 1. Standard retail illumination levels

Figure 4b. Rhythm

Figure 4c. Rhythm and focus


Dynamic and interactive elementsWith the application of digital technology

and continuing reduction of production costs there is a large amount of choice now available for creating dynamic and interactive lighting and display elements. This includes the application of LCD and static projectors, LED embedded materials, glazing panels, LED medial panels, and synchronised water and lighting installations. As always the overall effect of these installations has to be balanced in the retail environment to create the desired entertainment or experience effect without creating visual clutter (Figure 9).

Surface and transparency: Spent lightThere are four related aspects to the qualities

of materials and their relationship with light. These are reflectance, transparency, surface, and spectral selection. Reflectance refers to the amount of light reflected by an object described as a reflectance factor. A surface with high reflectance such as glass is very difficult to light properly. However when properly lit its internal reflectance properties can create pleasing effects. Colour backed glass is a common example. Directly lighting this glass will either cause glare or undesirable light scallops depending on the angle of incidence. As shown in the illustrated case (Figure 10b) an indirect wash of light reflected off an adjoining surface seems to have the best effect. Also including stainless steel trim within glass panels to catch specular effects of light can been quite effective.

Typical lamp types used in retail interiors Colour temperature Colour rendition

Blue sky light 10 000–25 000 K CRI 100. Good colour rendition

Overcast sky 7000 K CRI 100. Good colour rendition, reduced rendition of warmer colours

Noon sunlight 5000–6000 K CRI 100. Good colour rendition

High pressure sodium lamp 2700 K CRI 22–25. Poor but better colour rendition than low pressure sodium but still not very even. High lamp life

Fluorescent lamp 2700–6000 K

CRI 62–95. Some have poor colour rendition. However a variety of fluorescent lamps (T12, T8, T5, etc.) using rare-earth tri-phosphor technology, offer superior colour rendition (as high as 95) and a wide range of colour temperature choices (2700K–5000K and higher). Typically used for general arcade lighting for its high efficiency and long lamp life. Some with dimmable ballast. Varieties include linear, circular and compact fluorescent

Metal halide lamp 3000–4000 K CRI 65–85. Normally 70 watts, ballast not dimmable

Tungsten halogen Normally 3000 K CRI 95. Less intense light than incandescent, smaller, low voltage, less heat and dimmable. Suitable for task and accent lighting

Halogen par lamp 2900 K Good colour rendition, higher wattage than halogen lamp. Less efficient and high heat generation

Incandescent lamp 2500–4000 K CRI 80–100. Good range of colour rendition, cheap but not long lasting and inefficient

Low pressure sodium lamp 2000 K CRI 0. Poor colour rendition, very yellow light. High efficiency and very long lamp life

Candle light 1500–1700 K CRI 100

Table 2. Colour temperature and rendering properties of typical retail light sources

Shopfront Inter-tenancy column lighting scenes All images reproduced with permission by LDPi Edinburgh.

Transparency relates to the degree of opacity of an object (Figure 11a). Placing light sources behind transparent materials can create luminous or visual vibrancy described at the beginning of this article. The surface of the material has characteristics that can produce specular or diffuse reflection. This also affects the luminosity of the material (Figure 11b). Closely linked is the spectral selection, a term used to describe the portions of the spectrum reflected by an object from refraction. This is what gives a material its colour by selectively reflecting or blocking particular wavelengths of light. Composite materials such as Carrara marble and alabaster show off their vibrant depth when back or side illuminated. In these materials glare and background light is reduced to bring out the internal contrasts and depth of the material.

Of particular interest is experimenting with how water is illuminated. The internal reflective quality of water can be used to make light flow around pools and spill out in controlled locations. Alternatively a strong beam of light can be used to freeze a waterfall in its place.

Figure 7a. Low light Figure 8a. External shop display: Dior in Ginza Tokyo

Figure 8b. Indoor displayFigure 8c. Open display at China Arts & Crafts, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot

Figure 7b. Narrow uplighter

Figure 7c. Up and down lighter


SustainabilityThe basic and most obvious principle

involved in sustainable lighting is to maximise the use of natural daylight to replace as much of the artificial lighting as possible. After all it is free. Traditional methods such as atriums and skylights work well. New ‘core daylighting’ technology brings light deep into the core of buildings. It uses reflective tubes, prismatic tubes, heliostatic mirrors, and fibre optic remote lights. The latter can transmit light up to thirty metres to a light fitting from a collector on the facade or roof of a building through acrylic or liquid optic cables. These lights can further be fitted with lamps that supplement the lighting at night or when the outside lighting level falls below a certain level.

Tremendous advances have been made in the energy efficiency of certain lighting technologies in an effort to become more sustainable, among them the development of fluorescent lamps, LEDs, electronic ballasts and core daylighting technology. However the best results are always gained when lighting systems are linked together with all the other mechanical and electrical systems to an intelligent central control system. After all what good is an energy efficient |light if it is left on when not needed.

Although these are exciting days in the development of lighting technology, the issue of sustainability is not primarily about technology. Sustainable design for lighting is about using the right product correctly, in the right location and with the correct focus. A tremendous amount of energy is wasted on unnecessary or incorrectly designed lighting and its poor implementation.

ConclusionThis visual guide to lighting in retail

environments introduces some of the basic issues dealt with by lighting designers which are relevant for architects and designers to understand. Designing from the perspective of vision and lighting can offer designers useful insights and bridge the gap between concept and realisation for retail spaces.

Figure 10a. Vicwood Plaza, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot Figure 11b. Luminosity: Cladding at Chanel

Figure 10b. Internal reflection, water feature at Xintiendi Shanghai

Figure 11c. Pattern cladding at Dior, GinzaFigure 9b. Digital wall at Chanel Ginza, Tokyo

Figure 9c. Colour changing facade at Kosney Lifestyle Store, Seoul

Figure 9a. Moving light at Vision City (TWTL398), Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot Figure 11a. Transparency


Ivy, Sydney, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Shop/ 254 –255

R & F, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot

R & F, Hong Kong. Designed by Woods Bagot


Guide toHome

Tomorrow’s homes will:

/Be situated in more mixed use tall buildings

than ever before.

/Serve as both home and office.

/Be holiday escapes, with an apartment

in the city for daily grind.

/Inspire emotionally engaging architecture.

/Represent artisanship, provenance and authenticity.

/Achieve zero net energy.

/Contain sustainable products & support local community.

/Reflect personal spaces and personal choices.

/Change in configuration as family size reduces

and more people live alone.

/Become more retirement and care facilities

as the population ages.

/Be an experimental platform for design.

/Extend Yourself

Nik Karalis

/Subtropical Villas

Vince Pirrello

“The home is the last place for privacy

and personalisation. House design

will be both liberating and intimate.”

Nik Karalis, Woods Bagot

21st Century Guide to Life 21st Century Guide to Home/ 0261 – 0261

eXtenD yourselF

by Nik Karalis


Steven Cornwell has been working closely with Woods Bagot on both a strategic and visual implementation level for the Public research platform and the conceptualisation of almost six of the published research documents. Suffice to say he knows how we think and operate. When he asked us if we would design and transform his existing 50s residence in the leafy suburb of Melbourne, Kew, we accepted with trepidation. The possible cross interrogation from a client who knows us so well was fraught with risk.

What prevailed was an extraordinary experience. Instead of the usual client/architect debates and the imposition of standard domestic focus on unnecessary detail and functionality, Steven and his family presented a preliminary brief then left us to our own devices to conceptualise the project.

A primary focus was to avoid the usual add on extension that most small-sized homes are subject to when they have outgrown their previous usage. We’re all familiar with those awkward appendages stuck on from a different era without any design consideration for the original building.

In contrast, we were searching for a unique relationship between old and new that at its core had a careful tension between mimicry and adaptation. The movement internally needed to be a careful and sequential displacement of volumes to allow for a natural flowing transgression from original to new. Externally, the steep north-west facing site allowed us to dramatically reinterpret the existing geometry, inspired by a unique angular approach, into a complex three-dimensional insertion that offered deep set windows for shading and large trapezoidal columns which supported over-hanging balconies.

The original flat-roofed 50s house was entered formally through the front of the property. The house was separated in two by a west facing internal balcony. Today solar sensitive design would not have allowed this potential heat trap. Surrounding, adjoining buildings nestle into the side of a hill in a Bel Air, Los Angeles style. Small bedrooms and living spaces needed to be remodelled to allow for a contemporary lifestyle for the family to comfortably grow into its new refurbished house.

The new design included an additional living and balcony area and separation of children’s bedrooms to the lower level, liberating the family and providing a luxury of space and privacy for the complex family activities to co-exist. We discovered a new balance of spaces—private and public, intimate and grand, interior and exterior—all collaborating in a way that may not have been conceived if we had started from a totally new site.

The composition reveals itself as the next phase of domestic planning. From small private rooms of the pre-modern period, to today’s large open plan and zoned spaces, it has become a unique blend and balance of both small and large space. Often these inventions manifest from very atypical and unexpected briefs such as this one. The trick is to identify them and be open to the challenge. The interior pallet and new furnishings further enhanced the collection already set in place by Steven and his close friend, Paul Hecker. All that was needed was a further extrapolation, more space and a real connection to the new outdoor areas. The outcome: a feeling of luxury derived from the home’s heritage and contemporary living without forcing a strained dialogue between old and new.

Now that Steven has settled in, his view of allowing the architect more autonomy has been confirmed.

Cornwell Residence, Melbourne, Australia. Designed by Woods Bagot


“Designing space for people to inhabit is a complex exercise that requires a deep understanding of human anima. The character and spirit of our home transcends architecture and taps into our aspirations as a family and how we choose to live. While the photos of our house have been widely published, what you can’t see is the role of the architect. Part designer, part guidance counsellor and part anthropologist, the success of the house lies in its ability to absorb the surrounding topography. This is a house to be enjoyed from the inside out.” Steven Cornwell

by Vince Pirrello

SuBTRoPICaLVILLaS


Bill Henson’s photographic interpretation of the suburban landscape allows us to re-imagine one of the most prevailing built forms that dominate the world’s surface—the ubiquitous suburban sprawl. His imagery is at once familiar but then on closer inspection disturbingly abstract and unexpectedly beautiful. His images command and haunt, imposing themselves on our senses with the power of the real. They speak to us in a new tongue and command understanding. These are qualities of a true artist.

Henson has the capacity to realise a finite moment that could be the defining antithesis of the reality each of us know. This ability to define a moment is what has inspired the Noosa Elysium residences. Such intensity of moment is what we attempted to capture in a series of buildings that individually are like any other seaside dwellings but when realised concurrently, coagulate into a singular subtropical utopian experience.

The vision of the developer, Pearson Property Group, was to provide diversity through the appointment of several different architectural firms, to design ‘case study type’ housing without the interference of clients or agents with limited design understanding. A generic, functional brief was provided to all architects but each architect was allowed to promote their own housing response to the sensitive environment. This is not the first time such experiments have been attempted. Similar exercises such as the Southern Californian case study housing of the 50s, the Beijing Great Wall of China commune project (2002), and the Corsica ecotourism resort project (2000) all had significant and thought provoking impact. They primarily serve to extend the awareness of both the families occupying the houses and the marketing agents to consider the possibility of new designs and modes of occupancy, currently very limited by the stock and palette of ordinary land and house packages.

The idea was to take all the essential elements that make up a subtropical villa then de-construct them and scatter them across the subdivision. When seen as a collection they become the abstracted and symbolic representation of subtropical habitation.

The essential elements we defined as:– Cantilever– Courtyard– Interlock– Landscape

– Umbrella

These five elements were in turn represented as five separate buildings embedded into the Elysium pattern—divorced from their original source but each in their own right a condensed essence of the core components.

Lot 184: Cantilever A cantilever is a structural device whereby

buildings appear to float without any support. It is this magical factor that is the link once again to our idealised villa. Our focus here is to transcend the ordinary. Large enclosures of copper lined containers seemingly float in space. Furthermore the interior volumes support this proposition with floating plates intertwining and overlapping, creating the perception that only air supports their massiveness.

Lot 157: Courtyard Courtyard houses are a rare experiment in

residential dwellings in Australia, more often associated with European houses. These spaces are usually havens from the heat and link interiors with outdoor activities. In our interpretation, the courtyard becomes the pivotal device for the organisation of all the spaces in the house. At every point you are aware of its presence.

Lot 171: InterlockThe complexity of the perfect subtropical

villa emanates from a sense of interlocking buildings to form a larger compound of linked volumes. The interlock house is a micro representation of this clusterisation of pavilions. Our design principle was to give the impression of a large number of buildings by completing a compositional exercise where no block physically touches the other.

Lot 133: Landscape Landscape is a significant characteristic of

an idealised subtropical villa. This house interprets this physical characteristic by utilising a corner site with cascading ivy and raised landscape beds which over time will converge with the built form.

Lot 151: UmbrellaThis design concept responds to shading

an idealised subtropical villa. It manifests as a large trellised roof parasol that floats above the perimeter walls to provide both enclosure and shading. The intended impact is for the filtering of light through a high level as if you are under a tree canopy.

We have learnt from Henson that through distillation and a momentary intense representation that the typical notion of suburbia can be redefined. Possibly the suburban experience can transcend into a beguiling and dramatic narrative rather than the relentlessness of the common suburban homogeneity.

In contrast to traditional methods employed by property marketers to secure purchases, at Elysium the developer is relying on the architects commissioned to capture a new spirit of an appealing alternative scenario rich with intensity and desirability.

“The idea was to take all the essential elements that make up a subtropical villa then de-construct them and scatter

them across the subdivision.” Vince Pirrello

Lot 151: Umbrella


When seen as a collection they become the abstracted and symbolic representation of subtropical habitation.

Lot 133

Lot 151 Lot 157Lot 184

Lot 171

Lot 171: Interlock


Lot 133: Landscape

Lot 151: Umbrella

Lot 157: Courtyard

Appendix

“ Everything has been figured out,

except how to live.”

Jean-Paul Sartre

21st Century Guide to Life/ 276 – 27721st Century Guide to Life

PhotographyCover Her/ Gold trench – Antonio Beradi, Marais Melbourne; Purple clutch – Ted Baker; Bracelet – Canturi; Earrings – Cantari. Him/ Purple velvet jacket – Ted Baker; Black shirt – Godwin Charli; Red handkerchief – Godwin Charli; Slack silk trousers – Hugo Boss; Shiny Daville bag – Dior Homme, Assin.

21st Century Guide to Luxury Her/ Scoop neck purple gown – Vera Wang, Marais; Earrings and ring – Canturi; Black clutch – Oroton. Him/ Black silk suit – Hugo Boss; Fuschia shirt – Kenzo; Tie – Kenzo; Watch – Rolex. Her/ Clutch – Oroton; Ring and bracelet – Canturi.21st Century Guide to Rejuvenation Her/ Seafolly red bathers (stylist’s own), Karen Walker Sunglasses (stylist’s own), Black sun hat (stylist’s own), White Slipin lounge Forme Australia Him/ Mossimo shorts (stylist’s own)

21st Century Guide to Flight Kookai chocolate driving gloves, Country Road satchel, Kookai cream scarf, Oroton over night bag, Black gloves (stylist’s own)

Him/ Grey Country Road pant, Sportscraft knit, Sportscraft Coat, Country Road boots, Samsonite Luggage, Kenzo Satchel

21st Century Guide to The Mix Her on stairs/ Morrison Dress, Kookai knit, Kookai bangle, Aldo Ocelot pumps Her at desk/ Anna Thomas grey knit trouser, Country Road print shirt, Sportscraft knitted vest, Oroton bracelete, Aldo Patent platform pump

21st Century Guide to Work Single shot/ Kenzo suit, Country Road shirt, Carnival Delise tie available @ Declic Duo shot/ Declic grey shirt, Paul Smith tie, Godwin Charli grey suit, Country Road black belt, Oroton cufflinks, Aldo patent laceups/shoes, Sportscraft blue shirt, Sportscraft tie, Country Road suit, Declic cufflinks, Country Road boots

21st Century Guide to Play Her/ Jane Lamerton skirt, Sportscraft L/S tee (stylist’s own), Converse sneakers, Lacoste scarf Him/ Tommy Hilfiger cardigan (stylist’s own), Tommy Hilfiger shirt (stylist’s own), Nautica trouser (stylist’s own), Ellesse Italia trainer Urban project

21st Century Guide to Shop Her/ Kookai dress & gold bangle, Shoe props by Aldo Him/ Godwin Charli pant, Country Road boots

21st Century Guide to Home Her/ Morrison pant, Anna Thomas shirt, Him/ Declic red check shirt, Grey Country Road pant, Country Road belt, Oroton cufflinks

Stockists Marais www.marais.com.au Ted Baker Melbourne www.tedbaker.com Godwin Charli www.goodwincharli.com Assin www.assin.com.au Hugo Boss www.hugoboss.com Canturi Melbourne www.canturi.com Kenzo www.kenzo.com Oroton www.oroton.com.au Rolex www.rolex.com Country Road www.countryroad.com.au Morrison www.morrisonshop.com Anna Thomas www.annathomas.com.au Oroton www.oroton.com.au Kookai www.kookai.com.au Declic www.declic.com.au Godwin Charli www.godwincharli.com Sportscraft www.sportscraft.com.au Kenzo www.kenzo.com.au Aldo www.aldoshoes.com Forme Australia www.formeaustralia.com.au Declic www.declic.com.au Lacoste www.lacoste.com.au

Photographer Trevor King Stylist Christine Pegg

Authors BiographyStephan C Reinke RIBA FAIA Stephan C Reinke, Director of Woods Bagot and Managing Director, Europe, has worked in the international arena for over twenty years developing an in-depth experience in Europe, the Middle East, North America and Asia Pacific. Stephan is a leading architect in the design and delivery of tall buildings and major urban developments. He is recognised as a highly vocal advocate of ‘place making’ as a key urban design tool. His understanding of corporate end users and the design of workplace environments has informed a series of major projects.

Rob SteulA Principal at Woods Bagot, Rob Steul’s wealth of experience and creative talent has established him as a leader in mixed use, residential and hospitality projects in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific. Rob’s leadership in the hospitality and leisure industry has raised the standards of design excellence and elevated the market’s perception of lifestyle environments.

Nik Karalis Nik Karalis, Design Director, Woods Bagot, has been instrumental in the evolution of our research arm Public. Nik is one of Australia’s most prominent designers with a diverse portfolio of both interior and architectural projects. His work has received international acclaim and he has won a number of prominent design awards, including the 2001 FX International Award for Best Residence. In addition, his designs have been featured in a wide range of prestigious publications. Nik’s work crosses many boundaries, ranging from masterplanning, civic and commercial buildings and intimate interiors. It is Nik’s ability to move between these complex interplays of disciplines which allows him to communicate with clients and operate across many project types.

Chris SavvaChris Savva, an Associate at Woods Bagot, specialises in international lifestyle projects spanning the globe. As a Project Leader, Chris works closely with the consultant team in coordinating designs and flow of information, also working closely with our design leaders in both the concept and planning of buildings. Recent significant projects include: resorts in Belize, Cape Verde, Cyprus and Mauritius; and 10 Trinity Square in London. Chris has substantial experience in airport design, being a part of the winning design teams for Bahrain International Airport and Delhi and Mumbai Airports competitions.

Kevin PollardKevin Pollard is a designer in the Lifestyle sector of Woods Bagot with specialist experience in hotel, airport and resort projects, and a keen interest in trends and user experiences. Born in Brussels and being half Guatemalan has helped Kevin to understand the complexities of cultural diversity faced when designing in different regions. Following in his father’s footsteps (who wrote the Footprint Handbook on Colombia), he contributed to the East African Footprint edition while teaching in Kenya in his gap year. He gained silver place for his dissertation at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1999 on the evolution of Japanese architecture.

Vince PirrelloVince Pirrello is a Director of Woods Bagot with over twenty years experience. His work is contemporary in nature, concentrating on architecture and interiors for the Lifestyle sector that has a local influence and stimulates the senses, imagination and intellect. His work combines a rigorous and systematic approach applied at every level, from the large scale projects to the smallest detail. Vince has worked on key international projects in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Narita, Bangkok, Singapore and all Australia and New Zealand capital cities. His work has received international acclaim and he has won a number of prominent design awards, including the 2001 FX International Award and LEAP awards. In addition, designs have been featured in a wide range of publications.

Lucy MoloneyLucy began her career as a graduate architect but her interest in architectural history and theory grew after studying at the University of Florence. She has recently completed her Masters thesis on the urban impact of the Sydney Opera House and her work as an architecture and design writer has been regularly published in Australia’s top design journals over the past ten years. Lucy was a member of the Woods Bagot editorial team for Public #1: Spatial Tactics and Public #2: Education Futures.

Richard MarshallRichard Marshall is Principal and Director of Urban Design, Woods Bagot and is based in Dubai. He has worked as an urban designer and architect for sixteen years conducting architectural and urban design projects across the globe. He specialises in developing strategies that create or recreate a sense of place in urban environments, the design of complex urban projects, regeneration plans for urban areas and urban waterfronts, masterplans for corporate and business parks and residential complexes for public and private sector clients. Richard was Associate Professor of Urban Design and Director of Urban Design Degree Programs at the Harvard Design School. He has authored three books: Emerging Urbanity – Global urban projects in the Asia Pacific Rim (2003), Waterfronts in post industrial cities (2001), both published by Spon Press; and Designing the American City (2003), published by China Architecture and Building Press.

Martha SchwartzMartha Schwartz is a landscape architect and artist with a major interest in urban projects and the exploration of new design expression in the landscape. As president of Martha Schwartz Partners in Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, UK, her goal is to find opportunities where landscape design solutions can enhance the social, environmental, and economic sustainability of a place and raise them to a level of fine art. Martha is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Cooper-Hewitt Museum National Design Award, and an honorary fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects. Martha is also a Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where she has taught since 1992.

Stuart UrenAs a Principal, Stuart brings over fifteen years of industry experience to Woods Bagot Dubai studio. Stuart has played a key part of the management of Middle East Region during a period of rapid expansion in Dubai, the establishment of project offices in Doha, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Woods Bagot’s studio in Abu Dhabi. Recent significant projects include: the Badrah community in Dubai Waterfront, a vast development comprising medium density residential and mixed use buildings; luxury apartments for Jumeriah in DIFC; St Regis Hotel in Abu Dhabi; a range of towers varied in height and mixture of commercial and residential uses; masterplans in the city of Al Ain; Mall of Kuwait; Bahrain City Centre mixed use development; and the QSTP research facility. Stuart also managed the design and documentation of the College of Technology in Doha and the Abu Dhabi International Airport.

David ThorpeAs Global Director of Innovation at Ogilvy, New York, David Thorpe, leads the agency and its clients in developing innovation agendas for their business. Previously, David was the Global Lead for Strategy and Insights at Young & Rubicam Brands, working exclusively with Microsoft. As the Director of Corporate Creative Development at The New Yorker, David’s mandate was to provide new contexts and revenue streams for the magazine’s content, bringing the magazine into the digital age. Previously he held a similar position at Random House where he was responsible for the NPR series, Breakfast at Random House.

JC HerzJC Herz is a technologist with a background in biological systems and computer game design. Her specialty is multiplayer systems that leverage social network effects, whether on the web, mobile devices, or more exotically high-end or grubby low-end hardware. She is the author of two books, Joystick nation: How videogames ate our quarters, won our hearts and rewired our minds (Little Brown, 1997) and Surfing on the internet: A Nethead’s adventures online (Little Brown, 1994).

Antony WoodAntony Wood is Executive Director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. His expertise is in the sustainable design of tall buildings. Based at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Antony is also a Visiting Associate Professor in the College of Architecture at IIT. Prior to becoming an academic at the University of Nottingham, UK in 2001, and IIT in 2006, he worked in architectural practice in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. He is editor of the CTBUH annual edition of the journal, The Structural Design of Tall and Special Buildings and co-chair of the CTBUH Tall Buildings and Sustainability working group. Antony is also founder of the Tall Buildings Teaching and Research Group, based between the University of Nottingham, UK and the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.

James Calder James Calder is a Director at Woods Bagot and heads the global Workplace sector. He is a practitioner, academic, researcher, brief writer, advisor, concept designer and facilitator and has extensive experience with many of the world’s leading organisations and their workpalces. James Calder was Editor for Public #3: WorkLife.

Jeremy MyersonJeremy Myerson has been a leading writer, researcher and activist in the design industry for the past twenty-five years, with a special interest in the future of the workplace. He is Professor of Design Studies and Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art, London, where he also leads InnovationRCA, the college’s innovation network for business. Jeremy is the co-author with Philip Ross of Space to work: New office design (Laurence King, 2004). His previous books have included The 21st century office, New workspace: New culture, new public architecture and The creative office.

Jason MarriottJason Marriott, Principal, Woods Bagot leads the Beijing team with over twelve years of professional industry experience. Jason has a solid understanding of the Chinese design process, and market design drivers. After leading the design team that won the 2008 Beijing Olympic Village Jason became the chief foreign design architect for the Olympic Village where he obtained a unique understanding of very large scale mixed use developments, the Beijing residential market, and the Beijing development process period.

Stephen JonesStephen Jones is Woods Bagot’s Regional Managing Director for Asia. He has delivered significant projects both in Australia and off shore and has broad professional experience of a retail, residential, and commercial nature. As a Principal, Stephen contributes to all facets of the company’s business whilst focuses on delivering high quality design to both international and domestic clients. Stephen currently divides his time between Hong Kong and Beijing directing major planning and building design projects.

Iris S HwangIris consults as a writer/researcher to Woods Bagot and is currently undertaking her PhD study in multi-level, volumetric cities with multi-level connections at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to this in Sydney, Iris completed her studies in architecture, a Masters in Housing Studies and gained experience in the private sector and research in architecture and urbanism. Her fascination with high density urbanism led her back to Hong Kong (where she spent her teen years) to study the city’s urban experience in order to provide valuable insights to western cities with aspirations to intensify. Iris’ international upbringing has prepared her with cultural sensibility and insight to apply to her research.

Mathilde LucasMathilde has an international background and her trilingual assets have enabled her to work independently in diverse countries across Europe and currently Hong Kong. Mathilde, one of the Lifestyle sector leaders of the Hong Kong Studio, is a fervent designer and commentator on large scale retail positioning and future prospects and she has been published in various Asian trade publications. Her sensibility towards innovative quality design, teamwork and meeting the client’s requirements are uniquely reflected in her work within the Lifestyle sector.

Omid FerdowsianOmid is an experienced architect with a strong background across a wide range of mixed use, masterplanning, architectural and interiors projects. Working with major retail developers, operators and leasing agents for the past ten years he has developed a very good understanding of the needs of Asian retailers, brand value and shopper behaviour, particularly in the Chinese markets. His special interest in lighting and research into this field with LDPi translates into well-considered lighting environments for major lifestyle projects.

21st Century Guide to Life/ 278 – 27921st Century Guide to Life

21st Century Guide to ShopFor Sale: China Jason Marriott & Iris S Hwang Notes 1 The qipao was a ‘true fashion hybrid that fused the elements of traditional Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) court dress with the modern European silhouette’ (Mears, 1999).

References Kruger, B. (1990). I shop therefore I am. Artwork held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Mears, P. (1999, March 11-14). The myth of Suzie Wong: Chinese fashion in the western mind. Paper presented at the 1999 Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, MA. Retrieved January 26, 2008, from http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1999abst/china/c-160.htm

Okonkwo, U. (2007). Luxury fashion branding: Trends, tactics, techniques. South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan.

Shen, S. and Zhao, Y, (2007, January 19). Forbidden City’s Starbucks in hot water. International Herald Tribune. Retrieved January 28, 2008, from http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/18/bloomberg/bxstarbucks.php

Tam, V. (2005, November 19-26). Keynote speech presented at Business of Design Week 2005, Hong Kong.

Treasure Towers Stephen Jones & Iris S Hwang Photos Iris S Hwang & Billy Ip

Mall Theatrics Mathilde Lucas Photos Mathilde Lucas Other images Markus Biehal. Sourced from photolibrary Stock Exchange www.sxc.hu

Retail of the Future Jason Marriott & Omid Ferdowsian References Kang, C.X. (2005). Analysis on the characteristics of the shopping behaviour of urban consumers of China, cited in China New Shopping Power, International Business & Technology, 110-113.

Kim, W.C. and Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue ocean strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Enlighten Me Omid Ferdowsian

References Hart, C. (1984, March). Environments of light: Ornament in search of architecture. ID 31(2) pp. 22.

Lam, W. (1977). Perception of lighting as form givers for architecture. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Company.

LDPi Edinburgh, 5 Northumberland Street, North West Lane, Edinburgh, UK.

Linton, H. (1985). Color model environments: Color and light in three-dimensional design, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Marsh, A. J. (2007). TOA2 Ecology & Environment: Architecture of Light. Retrieved June 23, 2007, from http://www.squ1.com

Mende, K. and Lighting Planning Associates Inc. (2005). Lighting design: For urban environments and architecture. Japan: Rikuyo-sha Publishing

Morton, J. (2007 ). Color matters. Retrieved June 23, 2007, from http://www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html

Photos Unifor: Tom Berry, R&F: Daniel Wong

21st Century Guide to HomeExtend Yourself Nik Karalis Photos Trevor Mein

Silver Lining Jeremy Myerson

Notes 1 Taylorism - after Frederick Taylor, the engineer who invented time and motion studies in the workplace. The principle of achieving management efficiency through standardising tools and conditions.

2 Fordism - after Henry Ford, the pioneer car maker. The principle of mass production for mass markets with limited individual choice within a highly organised and planned economy.

References Davenport, Thomas & Cantrell. (2002). The mysterious art and science of knowledge-worker performance. MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 23–30.

Drucker, P. (1999). Knowledge worker productivity: The biggest challenge, California Management Review 41 (winter), 79-94.

21st Century Guide to PlayWork More Play Less Nik Karalis

References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (July, 2003). Australian Labour Market Statistics. (No. 6105.0). Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from AusStats database.

Braude, L. (1985). Work and workers. New York: Praegers.

OECD (2007). Employment Outlook 2007: Statistical Annex. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.oecd.org/document/26/0,3343,en_2649_201185_38551002_1_1_1_1,00.html

Statistics New Zealand (2006). Labour market statistics. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/FC56B1A7-FE92-4F78-A05C-0FD95943778C/0/LabourMarketStatisticsfinalpdfversion.pdf

Weber, M. (1904/2001). In S. Kalberg (Trans). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Chicago: Roxbury Publishing Company.

Barcode Rob Steul Photos James Winspear

The Big Picture Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney References Hall, C. (2007). Drawing conclusions: The psychology of ad effectiveness in different media environments. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.carltonscreen.com/why-cinema/drawing-conclusions.aspx

Holmes, N. (2007). FAME (Film Audience Measurement and Evaluation) Wave 1 report. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from. http://www.carltonscreen.com/why-cinema/audiences.aspx

Michaud, P.A. (2004). Cinéma Dada. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Edition.nsf/Docs/ID2878B1DCD9158C59C125708B004A083C?OpenDocument

Mussman, T. (1966). Early surrealist expression in the film, Film Culture, 41, 8-17. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.ubu.com/papers/mussman_toby-surrealist_film.html

Ruiz, R. (1995). Poetics of Cinema. New York: Miscellanies.

Shaw, J. and Weibel, P. (2002). Future cinema: The cinematic imaginary after film. Retrieved January 8, 2008, from http://www.zkm.de/futurecinema

Photos Thomas Bloch

21st Century Guide to LuxuryHome Sweet Home Nik Karalis Notes 1 “The International Style… implied a universality of approach which generally favoured lightweight technique, synthetic modern materials and standard modular parts so as to facilitate fabrication and erection. It tended as a general rule towards the hypothetical flexibility of the free plan, and to this end it preferred skeleton frame construction to masonry… Le Corbusier’s ideal villas of the late 1920s anticipated such formalism… white, homogenous man-made forms…” (Frampton, 1985, p. 248)

References Frampton, K. (1985). Modern architecture: A critical history. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Walker, L. (1996). American homes: An illustrated encyclopaedia of domestic architecture. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal.

Photos Trevor Mein

21st Century Guide to RejuvenationBarefoot Luxury Rob Steul Photos St Andrews Trevor Mein

21st Century Guide to FlightThe Journey Kevin Pollard Notes 1 The Grand Tour was normally an episode in the early lives of the upper classes of the eighteenth century and became an accepted stage in a man’s growing maturity. It developed out of growing awareness in the seventeenth century of the existence of other times and other places (Burk, 2005).

References Airbus super jumbo for private use. (2007). Retreived April 25, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6768237.stm

Burke, K. (2005). The grand tour of Europe. Retrieved July 25, from http://gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=108&EventId=301

Low cost carrier, (n.d.). Retrieved July 13, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_carrier#History

Masters, C. (2007, May 7). A first-class fight. Time Magazine, p. 59.

Pisa, N. and Nikkah, R. (2007). Roman has a rival as Russian builds world’s most expensive yacht. Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/nyacht11.xml

Rail 10 times better than air in London-Paris CO2 comparison. (2006). European Federation for Transport and Environment Bulletin, October 25. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.transportenvironment.org/Article267.html

Report on Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/ar/2005/pdf/ar2005_17.pdf

Robison, P. and Rothman, A. (2002). Boeing touting bat-winged plane. The Seattle Times. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=batwing25&date=20020725&query=%22blended+wing%22

Space Island Group. (n.d.). What’s new. Retrieved April 24, 2007, from http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/home.html

The best of the rest. (2007, November 19). Time Magazine, p. 43-49.

The blended wing body. (1999). Wings, April, 29(2).

The rise of the air taxi. (2007). Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.gadling.com/2007/05/20/the-rise-of-the-air-taxi/

Tompkins, J. (n.d.) The flying luxury hotel. Popular Science. Retreived April 25, 2007, from http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/18ac893302839010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

Virgin Galactic. (2007). Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.virgingalactic.com/

World Airline News (2001). Intra-European traffic figures follow long-haul decline. Retrieved December 13, 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ZCK/is_26_11/ai_76133887

Image Virgin Galactic image design by Sky26, reproduced with permission. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/

First Class Traveller Vince Pirrello & Lucy Moloney Notes 1 The United Nations describes Africa, Asia, Latin America and The Caribbean as less developed regions, Oceania as mixed and Europe and North America as developed.

References A world travel trends report. (2007). Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://www1.messe-berlin.de/vip8_1/website/MesseBerlin/htdocs/www.fair.itb-berlin.de/de/Presseservice/Publikationen/WTTR.pdf

Basu, I. (2003, August 22). India’s growing urge to splurge. Asia Times. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EH22Df01.html

Future Foundation (n.d.). The world of travel in 2020. Retrieved January 5, 2008, from http://www.futurefoundation.net/publications.php?disp=166

Key to future of luxury travel is sustainable responsible tourism. (n.d.). Travel and tourism news Middle East. Retrieved January 18, 2008, from http://www.ttnworldwide.com/News.asp?Article=7325

Luxury Alliance. (2006). The direction of luxury. Retrieved January 15, 2008 from http://www.luxuryalliance.com/pdf/Luxury_Alliance_2006_white_paper.pdf

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, (n.d.).World population ageing 1950–2050. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/

United Nations World Tourism Organisation. (n.d.). Tourism 2020 Vision. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/vision.htm

Photos Qantas First Lounge Sydney: Olaf Reuffurth Sydney International Airport: John Gollings

21st Century Guide to CitiesUrban Life… Coming Soon Richard Marshall

References Hall, P. (1998). Cities in Civilization. New York: Pantheon Books.

Koolhaas, R. (1978). Delirious New York: A retroactive manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Oxford University Press.

Photo Daniel Davey & Matt Hederics

The Branded In-Between Martha Schwartz & Heather Ring

Photos Mesa Arts Center, Arizona: Martha Schwartz Partners; Jacob Javits Plaza, New York: Martha Schwartz Partners; Grand Canal Square, Dublin: Tim Crocker.

Render Grand Canal Square, Dublin: Hayes Davidson.

Growing Pains Stuart Uren Photos Naia Stuyck and Stephan Luecke

Society’s Double Helix David Thorpe and JC Herz Notes 1 Outside of World War II, the Parisian streets would not see sedition again until May, 1968— arguably the Situationist-inspired uprisings were to protect the emergent form of life and culture afforded by Hausmann’s design in opposition to the ‘invasion’ of manufactured pop culture.

2 To permit the restructuring of Paris, many communities (tens of thousands of people) were relocated at significant human cost. Haussmann deliberately sought to break up these communities and remove the potential for insurrection. The lessons were repeated in America after WWII when many corporations moved their factories out of inner-city areas to the suburbs and beyond in order to neuter the negative effects of group identification, such as labour movements and unions, and minimise the potential for strikes.

3 The riots began on 27 October 2005, triggered by the deaths of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor commune in an eastern banlieue (suburb) of Paris.

4 It ignored India’s own ancient past of urban planning with its own concepts and precepts.

5 Chandigarh would become the capital of two states, Punjab and Haryana. Haryana did not exist at the time Chandigarh was built, the state was formed in Nov 1, 1966 to reconcile Punjab and Hindi.

6 Chandigarh would be the only one of Corbusier’s numerous urban planning schemes to actually be executed. Brasilia was based on his CAIM concepts.

7 Le Corbusier, excusing himself of the burden of being an individual, talks in his edict of gifts from the (city’s) creators such as the Lake. The edict continues that the city will be rid of any sculpture that is not ‘sublimated’—in other words, no sculptures of people only abstracted shapes and forms in keeping with the architectural vocabulary of the entity. The Edict was a simplified edition of Le Corbusier’s document entitled, ‘For the Establishment Statute of the Land’ which contained three sections and was presented to the High Level Committee. The Edict of Chandigarh is on display in the leisure valley.

8 Corbusier’s capitalisation: he always referred to the plan as the Plan.

9 Sixty-seventy per cent of Nigerian industries reside in Lagos.

10 The Lagos Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LAMATA) has been created to find a solution to this problem.

11 The pentagon’s usefulness as a highly defensible and manageable form dates back to pagan times. Such strength, afforded by the 360 degree view, has evoked subsequent symbolic values emanating from such an ‘all seeing eye’.

References A fantasy garden rises from the jungle. (2005). Retrieved May 5, 2007, from http://layersofmeaning.org/wp/?m=200511

Associated Press, (2003). Retired subway cars will sleep with the fishes. Retreived May 5, 2007, from http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=1105

Designing Black Rock City. (2007). Retrieved April 20, 2007, from www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/brc_growth.html

Evenson, N. (1966). Chandigarh. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Haussmann, B. cited in Girard, L. (1981) Nouvelle histoire de Paris: La deuxième république et la second empire, 1848-1870, Paris; cited in Scott, J.C. (1998). Seeing like a state. London: Yale University Press.

M-Pesa (2007). Retrieved November 20, 2007, from http://www.safaricom.co.ke/m-pesa/

Nek Chand: The untutored genius who built a paradise. (n.d.). Retrieved May 3, 2007, from http://www.rawvision.com/nekchand/nekchand.html

Nek Chand’s story. (n.d.). Retrieved May 3, 2007, from http://www.folkart.org/mag/messmain.html.

Packer, G. (2006, November 13). The Megacity: Decoding the chaos of Lagos. Retrieved November 20, 2007, from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/13/061113fa_fact_packer

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2006). Chandigarh UT’s e-governance roadmap. Retrieved November 20, 2007, from http://www.chdit.gov.in/egrm.pdf

Rice, X. (2007, March 20). Kenya sets world first with money transfers by mobile. Retrieved 20 April, 2007, from http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2038302,00.html

Sarin, M, (1977). Chandigarh as a place to live in. In R. Walden (Ed.), The open hand: Essays on Le Corbusier. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. London: Yale University Press.

Sovich, N. (2006, November 10). Paris Sewers Give City of Light A Fiber-Optic Edge, Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 19, 2007, from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116311331721719120.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/Population Division. (2005). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Report. Retrieved November 20, 2007, from http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005WUP_DataTables11.pdf

10 Principles. (2007). Retrieved April 20, 2007, from www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/principles.html

Photos Traffic Cone Art 2 from Burning Man by PaperDog2005, Burning Man 2002 by Pathfinder Linden, Flowers by Ruthless Logic, Burningman by Go Climb a Rock, Burning Man by Light Matter, Hope Flower by Brainsik, Burning Man 2007-66 by Ruthless Logic, The Flower by Smoobs, all taken from www.flickr.com, City Central: Ross Williams

21st Century Guide to the MixBeyond Sculpture Antony Wood All images courtesy of Eva Young and Antony Wood, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

Unconventional Nik Karalis Notes 1 Cabinet of Wonders

2 Green Building Council of Australia rating

Photos Night construction: Brianna Byrne, Brendan Finn – meinphoto, Day construction: Glenn Hester Renders: John Gollings

21st Century Guide to Work14 Hour City James CalderImages NYSE 3DTF Virtual Reality Environment, New York, NY (1997 – 2000); Courtesy of NYSE/SIAC/ASYMPTOTE

Notes 1 The inventor and engineer (1878–90) introduced time-and-motion study in order to systematise shop management and reduce manufacturing costs. Though his system provoked resentment and opposition, it had an immense impact on the development of mass production techniques and has influenced the development of virtually every modern industrial country.

2 Known for managing the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using assembly lines, Ford was fiercely committed to lowering costs which resulted in many technical and business innovations, including the dealership franchise system.

References Conlin, M. (1999, September 20). 9-5 isn’t working anymore. Business Week, pp. 94-98.

Daugherty, G. (1993). A world that never stops. World. New York, 27, 46-48.

Energy Information Administration. (2007). International Energy Outlook. Retrieved December 5, 2007, from http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/world.pdf

Flexibility valued by British workers. (2003). The Worklife Report, 14, 18.

Marmot, A. and Eley, J. (2000). Office space planning: Designs for tomorrow’s workplace. McGraw-Hill.

Merrow, M., Spoelstra, K., & Roenneberg, T. (2005). The circadian cycle: Daily rhythms from behaviour to genes. EMBO Reports, 6, 930-935.

Sarkis, K. (2000). Watching the clock. Occupational Hazards, 62, 42-44.

Trotsky, J. (1987, August 10). Manager’s journal: Work schedules should accommodate the early bird and the owl. Wall Street Journal, p. 1.

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public #4: 21st century guide to life

Documents

century guide

guide stephan c reinke

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unconventional nik karalis

home sweet home nik

luxurystar inflationrob

nicola brew editorial

editorial panel