Back to basics in retail and office architecture

Relevance beyond shopping – this is what the next generation of local shopping malls should move towards, Mario Sua Kay, the architect behind Immochan’s EUR 60 million Coresi mall in Brasov, tells BR.

Simona Bazavan

“I’ve visited shopping malls from the Baltic countries to the Balkans and they are all so similar. Internally they are all beige, safe, straight and very dull places to be. People go there because there is no alternative, in a way,” argues Kay, the founder of Portuguese firm Sua Kay Architects.

And Romania is no exception to this general trend, with most local malls being “isolated boxes that look like railway stations or airport terminals”.

Kay, the architect behind Immochan’s EUR 60 million Coresi project in Brasov, says the mall, which will be opened next year, will break away from this.

“The shopping mall itself will be very much city specific. It’s not a box that could be built anywhere else and have the same impact,” he says.

The first step was to get the feel of the city and integrate that into the future mall.

“Brasov has a certain charm because the old bits work with the new ones,” making it similar in this regard to cities like Seville or Lisbon, he says.

Elements in the facades, the colors and the building’s irregularities have references to the city itself.

“We’ve tried to follow the city’s pattern where you walk and discover new places,” in the way the interior corridors are designed, notes Kay.

The project is branded as a “shopping resort” and special attention has been given to integrating the outdoors, a step up from the general idea that “a shopping mall is something that is totally internal, that you go in and the only thing you do is shop, shop, shop, and you don’t want to know about the outside”. This will translate into the use of glass, lots of natural light, an open food court and an outdoor terrace, adds the architect, whose firm has designed another Immochan mall which will be delivered this November in Portugal.

Making the shopping mall community relevant is another important feature for the Coresi project and in line with what is happening elsewhere in Europe, says the architect. Going to a shopping mall to get a passport or pay the bills, and retail projects that host health facilities or entire clinics are becoming customary.
But above all, Kay says he wants his retail projects to be places that offer people more than shopping options, fun places where people of all generations come together, socialize and enjoy themselves. “With the new generation of shopping malls, a lot of people think it’s all going to be electronic. And I say, why do you want to put people in a shopping mall, looking at screens with their mouths open and not doing anything besides what they can do at home?” he asks.

Back to basics

All in all, the next generation of shopping malls will mark a return to the basics. “In a way, it is going back, humanizing the experience, making it more touchy feely,” outlines the architect, who nevertheless admits that “there is still very much a closed box idea going on” when it comes to retail architecture.
Kay, who has been to Romania before and also designed Martifer’s Prime Towers office project in Bucharest (2008) and Benevo’s retail scheme in Colentina, a project that the developer later dropped, thinks the local market will definitely evolve further in terms of architecture and design.

This will happen even with office projects, where developers still like to play it safe. With fewer people now working the regular 9 to 5 full-time program and the concept of smart cities gaining ground, offices will have to evolve as well.
But at the end of the day, how important is a project’s architecture to its success? It is one of the basic requirements, thinks Kay, and as competition between developers to attract shoppers and tenants increases, architecture should have an increasingly important say.

This will mean better days for architecture firms as well, which alongside other real estate players have seen their business shrink in recent years.
Depending on the country, the project’s complexity, the value of the investment and the services provided, an architecture firm can be paid around 2-3 percent of the entire value of the project, says Kay.

Immochan Romania wants to open Coresi Brasov in March 2015

The EUR 60 million first phase of the Coresi Brasov real estate project, developed by Immochan Romania, the real estate division of the Auchan Group, will be delivered in the first quarter of 2015, probably March, company representatives have previously stated.

It will comprise an Auchan hypermarket (13,000 sqm) and a commercial gallery (32,000 sqm) which in turn will feature some 130 stores, a cinema multiplex (with eight projection rooms), a food court (3,500 sqm) and an entertainment area (1,500 sqm). Some 70 percent of the project is already leased.

Coresi Brasov is being developed on a 100 ha plot of land that was part of the Tractorul industrial platform in Brasov (190 km from Bucharest) which Immochan bought in 2012. The development of the entire project is projected to take 15 years. In addition to the mall building, it will feature several other retail boxes (DIY, furniture, sports and electronics stores) and a service station.

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