After much hype, delay, and drama, The Dubai Mall opened up its countless doors to the consumer world in November. The latest addition to Dubai’s cluttered shopping scene is one of the biggest malls in the world and takes the spotlight off the previous largest mall in the Middle East, the Mall of the Emirates, and those that came before it.
While there was once the first indoor ski resort in the Middle East offering real snow in the desert, and more than 450 stores at Mall of the Emirates, there is now an aquarium housing 33,000 fish – including the world’s largest collection of adult sand tiger sharks – on the other side of the world’s largest single viewing acrylic panel (a Guinness Book of World Records entry, say mall representatives), an ice rink, and, when completed, 1,200 stores at The Dubai Mall. No matter whose features are more exciting or more ground-breaking, arguably no one does malls quite like the Middle East.
In a region that swelters under the summer sun for more than a quarter of the year, the idea of outdoor shopping hasn’t garnered much enthusiasm. Climate-controlled malls became a hit the instant they began sprouting across the Gulf, providing people with an alternative to walking up and down hot streets, looking for their favorite boutiques.
Much like the trend spreading across the rest of the world, malls in the region – and in Dubai specifically – are not just shopping gimmicks offering a host of retailers, a few coffee shops, and a busy food court. Today’s malls are about the experience, pulling footfall in with themes, attractions, journeys, and education. They have become part of communities, rather than just convenience go-tos, providing wandering shoppers with things to buy, things to look at, and things to do.
“The hermetically-sealed shopping mall has no relationship with the community around it, and it will not carry on in that vein,” says Ibrahim Ibrahim, managing director of Portland Design, a UK-based company that designs “consumer facing environments” for the retail, leisure and travel sectors. “If you’re going to create a shopping mall that is enclosed and climatically-controlled, at least try to build it in the vein of a community. In a community, you walk through shops, you walk through entertainment, and you eat and you drink and you shop all in the same area.”
SIX WANDERS OF THE WORLD. A walk through Ibn Battuta mall, “the world’s largest themed shopping mall,” shows great effort to follow the “experience” movement. With six themed courts based on the life of Arab traveler and adventurer Ibn Battuta, the mall adheres to the “edutainment” trend by positioning itself as an interactive museum-type mall. “What we like to do with the décor and the icons [which include a boat and a life-size model elephant] is give the place a sort of unique ambience,” says Marc Jones, marketing manager of Ibn Battuta mall, part of Nakheel Retail. “It’s entertainment in a recreational and cultural way. The USP is the cultural attraction and the history. The actual icons themselves are worth millions of dirhams and are effectively interactive museum pieces.”
The courts – China, India, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia and Andalusia – spread over 1.3 kilometers, on one floor, and are divided for ease: convenience, family, modern trends, lifestyle, designer fashion, and entertainment. They also house the only IMAX cinema screen in the UAE, and architectural feats including a hand-painted mosaic dome in the Persia court, and a giant model of an elephant in the India court.
“Because it’s all one level, it seems a lot more spread out than it actually is,” explains Jones. “You can go to Mall of the Emirates and walk the same distance, but you would have done it on two levels. You’ll find someone coming in here for the first time will take it as a slow and enjoyable experience. Regulars know the areas and they will go there, and we know that from the footfall. We put it into sections, which is clever because you have a reason to go to a specific court, and you won’t get caught up in the bustle. Visitors will park according to the areas they want to go to. We have great parking throughout all the courts, not just one. So for our regular customers it’s more relaxed, and it’s not a chore or a challenge to go there.”
Jones adds that while Ibn Battuta does not compete with other malls in terms of attractions, “Where we aim to differentiate ourselves is understanding our customers’ wants and needs, who our customers are in various segments, and delivering from a service point of view their requirements. Therefore the retail mix, experience, parking, food offerings, family things to do, lighting, all these things become more and more important and that’s where we measure our success on those deliverables.”
GREAT SHOPS, FANTASTIC ROOF. While Ibrahim agrees that the architecture of Ibn Battuta mall can “take your breath away,” he believes the mall is fundamentally flawed in its design. “Customer circulation is not intuitive,” he says. “When you’re designing a mall, the last thing you want customers to do is to look up at the roof when they’re walking around; Ibn Battuta encourages customers to look at the roof and not the shops, because the roof is so wonderful. I’m not saying the roof shouldn’t be wonderful, but the shops should be more wonderful. One could argue maybe it’s not a shopping centre, maybe it’s just a walk of discovery, but tell retailers that when they’re paying high rents for shops.”
“There also seems to be no relevance between the tenants and offers and the theming of the districts,” continues Ibrahim. “The theming stops at the architecture; if I’m going through an Indian-themed area, the last thing I want is another bloody Starbucks. If you’re going to do it, do it right the way through as a customer experience. The roof, the ceilings, the columns, they’re all wonderful. So much time, money, and effort has been spent on the fabric of the interior, and it takes your breath away, there’s no question about that. But it should have been executed in relation to an efficient shopping experience.”
Enter The Dubai Mall, where the shopping experience is arguably more effective. With 12.1 million square feet to play with, a lot could have been done wrong. “The vision of the mall is to be able to offer size and scope,” says Karen Willett, senior marketing manager for The Dubai Mall. “If you’re looking for a sneaker, you’ll have the brands like Nike and Puma, and we’re trying make sure we give each store as much space as possible to offer their entire range. Then you can go to Go Sport, see Nikes and Pumas there, and compare. This allows you to make the best decision, so when you walk out of that door, because you’ve got the scale and scope and breadth of offer, you walk out knowing you’ve got the best deal and the best product that’s right for you at that point in time.”
With The Dubai Mall’s key features including an aquarium and discovery center, an ice rink and a gold souk, the only access to the Burj Dubai observation deck once the tower is completed, KidZania (“a land for kids created by kids”), Sega Republic (an indoor theme park,) and a retractable roof in the Grove area, the center is clearly aiming for experience and education in addition to retail. “There is definitely an increase in the need for malls to focus on leisure and entertainment, and it’s about being part of the community; so you need to have reasons to keep bringing people back,” says Willett.
“The Dubai Mall is a million times better designed, conceived, and planned than Ibn Battuta,” says Ibrahim. “There are some absolutely fantastic pieces of design there. I think the districting is really fantastic; you really feel you’re in a luxury area or a kids’ area or a convenience area. The biggest disappointment for me is the food court, because it’s a food court. I think the days are dead and gone when a shopping mall should have a food court. We should be trying to replicate real places, and make real community places, with shopping being part of a community.”
“Also, the navigation and signage is really confusing,” continues Ibrahim. “Whoever did it doesn’t know how to design signage; they should have come to us. It really is over the top and very complicated and too small in most places. But it’s going to be a stunning success; I have no doubt about that. It’s in a fantastic location and it’s really beautiful.”
RETAILING OFF. What of Dubai’s other malls, whose time in the spotlight has come to an end with the coming of The Dubai Mall? “What will happen is that Mall of the Emirates will become more of a mainstream mall, and The Dubai Mall more of a luxury mall. And you’ll find in a market that malls will polarize to serve specific communities,” says Ibrahim. “Mall of the Emirates is really good, but architecturally it’s really naïve. That was a space where they could have built anything, but instead they built an alien-looking stainless steel ski slope; it’s really awful. But it works really well commercially, it’s fantastically planned and really intuitive, but unfortunately it’s just another American shopping mall, and that’s not what we should be building anywhere in the world, really.”
“One of the biggest failures in shopping malls is the development of Burjuman, how they’ve created the new bit and left the old bit the same,” continues Ibrahim. “I think that’s bizarre. They should have blended the two. It doesn’t work from a retailer perspective, because no retailer wants to be in the old bit.”
Ibrahim prophesies that the days of the closed off, sealed shopping mall are numbered. “I think there will be a move towards much more connectivity to other uses, where shopping malls will be part of more of a mixed-use community, with connectivity to housing, leisure, and exhibitions, and certainly there’s going to be a convergence with shopping and events and entertainment,” he says. “In principle, the way malls will be conceived will not be with shopping as the starting point. The starting point will be the experience.”
CENTER-AL PLANNING
We ask Ibrahim Ibrahim, managing director of Portland Design, what are the most important elements in mall design?
PLANNING: Create primary routes to optimize customer circulation (horizontal and vertical), sight lines, connectivity to the public realm, and avoid tertiary routes and “cold spots.”
MIX STRATEGY: To achieve most appropriate tenant mix, to create defined and branded districts that appeal to specific customer segments and create a seamless, connected story in the customer experience. Allow for the incorporation of event-driven experiences that can be programmed and connected to retailer activity.
PUBLIC REALM: Plan and design the public realm to create public space “anchors” (for people to get their bearings from) and true connectivity with the tenanted spaces and other public realm anchors.
TENANT GUDELINES: Create guidelines that encourage tenants to express their brand, yet allow the establishment of a cohesive design.
BRANDING: Establish the positioning, values and brand tone of voice for the mall brand, and express this organically within the environment, and remember that badging the mall with logos does not constitute branding.
ARCHITECTURE: This should be designed “inside out,” to make a building that expresses its use, the brand and the customer experience.