Adaptability is a word which is often used in relation to shopping mall design and is required at every level of retail property development chain, from master planning, through to the design and future refurbishment requirements of shopping malls, the individual tenancy spaces, the digital app presence and promotion of events in the mall as well as leisure and retail venue excellence is key to success.

The traditional design and the refurbishment techniques of a retail mall weighted at both ends with anchor tenants with a large car park well suited to suburban greenfield development needs rethinking. Unfortunately, as we squeeze an ever-increasing number of residents into our cities, those opportunities are limited. Even in regional towns, we see zoning limitations from Planners that discourage “out of town mall” retail development. They prefer to see a limited sized retail expansion of existing town malls.

What many planners fail to understand, is that if you want to draw fashion retail into an area, you need, at the very least, a 7,000m2 GLA and this is not the easiest thing to accommodate in an existing town mall, especially when the major tenants lack flexibility in design and floor-space required to achieve a profitable outcome for both landlord and tenant.

We think there is a need to adapt traditional models to suit a new market environment, one that responds to the economic retail challenges, town planning demands and digital apps driving the Generation Y consumer purchases.

Some of the better sub-regional malls are designed to integrate with their environment, being a town square brand, with street retail, and natural landscaping. Market-place branded malls often maintain the retail rules of a the traditional shopping mall. However, they need to adapt to the demands of Generation X, Y and Z with apps, social media promotion and formats to suit local environment planning and consumer catchment segment they intend to occupy.

Turning to the design and refurbishment of shopping malls, for us, it's important that the mall design is as exciting and interesting as the event promotion and equal to the best downtown entertainment and leisure experience on offer to the local community.

When it comes to retail interior shopping mall design, branding and signage systems, we aim to animate as many retail brands and as many experiences as possible by making shopping a fun adventure.

We continually benchmark the best in class shopping mall operations across the globe.

Why not call and talk to us about your shopping mall design or refurbishment programme, digital branding and social media requirements.