You got it all by the bay
May 20, 2006 | 12:00am
Pinoys are a mall-crazy people. They love to congregate at these modern-day urban centers to celebrate, ambulate, gorge, gossip, and gimmick. Then there’s the shopping. Come Sunday, May 21, mallers will have the ultimate in shopping venues – the Mall of Asia.
With over 600 international and local shops, a mouthwatering selection of 150 indoor and outdoor dining venues (pollution-free at that!), and the Philippine’s first Olympic-sized ice skating rink, an IMAX theater (with the world’s largest wrap-around screen), there’ll be more than enough distractions and attractions to keep 10 million Metro Manilans happy. Not to mention a 180-degree unimpeded view of Manila’s fabulous bay!
Mall design in the Philippines has gone through an evolution and revolution. Malls have now broken out of their old gray boxes. Natural light is brought in. Ceilings are raised and large atria become colorful event settings. Formerly introverted complexes have embraced the street and landscaped courtyards are a must for visual and sensual relief.
The SM chain has been steadily renovating its older malls and building new ones. Customers will benefit from these new trends; the added costs to construction because of better design value will be recovered in heaps by increased patronage. And top of the heap is the hip and happening Mall of Asia.
The Mall is actually a complex of four buildings. Breaking up the box is literally taken as a design strategy here by the bay. The four buildings are the Main Mall, the Entertainment Center Building, the North Parking Building, and the South Parking Building. All are linked by elevated walkways with many forming veritable balconies from which to enjoy the sea breeze and Manila’s famous sunset.
The Mall of Asia can be reached via the extension to EDSA. This grand hundred-meter wide avenue leads from the EDSA/Taft intersection past Roxas Boulevard and Diosdado Macapagal Avenue to a huge rotunda marked by a steel globe. I’ve been waiting for someone to resurrect this favorite landmark of mine. There was a similar (but much smaller) globe at the old Agrifina circle that is now gone and replaced by an oversized Lapu-Lapu. The Mall of Asia globe is a great way to anchor the site with the large but low mall complex behind it. The globe is lit with lights that change colors at night and a spotlight is aimed constantly at the Philippines – talk about a global monument!
Generous parking is provided in front plus proper bus stops and even an FX terminal (lessons learned from Megamall and other SMs in the city). Of course, there’s the multi-story carparks for more convenience. The entry atrium is larger and taller than any other SM, and signage (or wayfinding systems, as American consultants call them) is clear and graphically appealing. This wayfinding extends to the color-coding of stores and their locations. This Main Mall contains most of the shopping and dining establishments, the ice skating rink, and the food court. More food is available along the "streets" that separate the four buildings. These are open beyond the mall’s main hours (another lesson from Megamall). With a call center coming up beside the mall, these are sure to be vibrant places 24/7.
The Entertainment Center Building is the second main draw. This houses the IMAX and the Cineplex (10 theaters including a Director’s Club). The center is ringed with balconies at the second floor and an open-air verandah that takes advantage of the panoramic views of the bay. The parking buildings house an SM Hypermart, more dining outlets, and the SM Department store at the other end.
The interiors of the mall are spacious – wider than the standard width of most and punctured regularly by space-age oval skylights that make the mall brighter and airier than any I’ve seen locally or even internationally. The design team was led by Arquitectonica, a Miami-based consultancy firm with Robert Carag Ong and Associates as the Filipino architectural firm in charge. The interior design and lighting is restrained but with color accents, minimalist but just so that the individual stores’ merchandise and designs are made more prominent. These stores have also seemed to make an extra effort to complement the mall’s seaside theme and general quality of design.
At the end of the day, some people may consider the Mall of Asia just another mall, albeit a huge and well-designed one. But it really is more than that. The Mall of Asia is just the core of what will be a larger, integrated, mixed-use complex by the bay. SM has already built one other landmark – a church. It has constructed a call center and has just broken ground on a convention center. The whole complex will, in the future, mature into a fully-featured urban district with residential complexes, hotels, office complexes, and more open green space. When that happens (and we are assured that it will), then you’ll really get it all at the Mall!
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