Hydroponic Experiments - 50 000 people - Massing

50 000 people food supply with Flat Bed Hydroponic system.

• 114 floors
• 418m high building
• 786411m2 worth of growing and floor area

50 000 people food supply with Stacked Hydroponic system.

• 61 floors
• 223m high building
• 420799m2 worth of crop floor area
• 1 258 500m2 worth of crop growing area

Hydroponic Experiments - 50 000 people

Food Supply

Hydroponic Experiments - 100 000 people - Massing

100 000 people food supply with Stacked Hydroponic system.

• 120 floors
• 440m high building
• 2517000m2 worth of growing and floor area
• 836100m2 worth of crop floor area

100 000 people food supply with Flat Bed Hydroponic system.

• 361 floors
• 1324m high building
• 25170004m2 worth of growing and floor area

Hydroponic Experiments - 100 000 people

Site Supply

Based on ABS statistics the site required to supply 100 000 people is enormously large. The skyscraper would stretch up from the ground 78982.2m.  Untenable......

Agindustrial

Australians Spend $100 dollars on groceries each year.  Out of all of Australias Land Mass only 10% is arable land of which, most is located on the peripery of urban areas, in areas such as Melbournes Green Wedges.  The developement of these Green Wedges continues against the recomendations of the Melbourne 2030 planning document.  As this   It is from here that most of Melbournes perishable vegetable supply is grown.

Consuming Design

The Character of Shopping Mall Design

The intent of malls are purely scientific - Economics.  And so, the design of malls are also driven purely by economics.  Developers have sought to create a fantasised disassociation from the act of shopping, a machine that induces the exchange of money.  Scientific and Psychological gestures, spatial and subliminal tricks that seduce, stimulate and physically manipulate, amounting to an illusion that there is something else going on rather than shopping and it is supremely important and cultural.

Victor Gruen’s initial intent for the mall was to create a traditional market, a town square, evoking a sense of place through cultural enrichment, education and relaxation. This intent was a philosophical endeavour to mend what Gruen perceived as a the culturally sparse landscape that was 1950’s suburban America.  His dream steadily turned into his nightmare as developers seized on his design with the new intent of malls becoming purely scientific.  And so today's malls and their program and design are driven purely by economics.  Developers have sought to create a fantasied disassociation from the act of shopping to generate huge profits.   Scientific and Psychological gestures, spatial and subliminal tricks that seduce, stimulate and physically manipulate, amounting to an illusion that there is something else going on rather than shopping and it is supremely important and cultural.  The Shopping Mall product has effectively become a pseudo-place which works through spatial strategies of dissemblance and duplicity, much to Gruen’s disgust.

The design of malls as civic spaces, less the grit and grime, the annoying street signs, telephone poles, trams, vagrants and vandalism that we associate with it, create an idealised sense of the public street with all citizens enjoying a carefree and happy life.  Those inside enjoy social experiences, participatory entertainment that in essence represents a distinctly purified idealist and puritanical view, controlled by those that purvey it.  Indeed the safety and convenience of the mall becomes the mall developers greatest advertising tool.

However the structure and program of the mall is decidedly not like an urban space at all with every little detail and placement of those details having an underlying logic all aimed at reinforcing a credit card culture.  Drinking fountains, which remove soft drink sales may be hard to find.  Rest rooms, which are expensive to upkeep are usually poorly signed and difficult to locate not to mention a magnet for antisocial behavior.  Undesirable tenants are excluded based on their image and the type of clients they attract making malls places of extreme discrimination, a type of cultural cleansing.

Along side these explicit acts of social conditioning the shopping mall deploys another set of implicit spatial and psychological devices through the internalised syntax that is the spatial realm of this type.


Consuming Design

The shopping centre, as a location provides, the context in which we habitually play out our desires.  In a sense it becomes a phenomenological space by which we are, through convention, forced to purchase.  Through the elements (the signifiers) that make up a shopping centres built environment we are guided to act in a certain social way.  And thus the spatial organisation and segregation of the mall is set up such that our predicted behavior from a predicted demographic form the context of the mall. 

Through environmental science, the tools for mall designers have been conceived to socially orient the actions within it, one literally comes to know ones place.  Each person enters a mall in a particular state of being or mood.  It is the shopping malls role to place this consumer in a state of bliss, therefore a spender of money.  A shopper reacts to their environment psychologically in three ways:

• Cognitively
• Emotionally
• Physiologically

The shopping centre as a spatial system reacts to these directly through its a complex syntax of architectural and psychological gestures which can be grouped into three main types:

• Ambient Conditions - Physiology
• Spatial Layout and Functionality - Cognition
• Signifiers - Signs and Symbols and Artifacts - Emotion

The Character of Shopping Mall Design.

Consumerist Characteristics of Style

Stylistically speaking, the minimalist approach reveals shopping and consumption habits by exposing the context through an act, a one thing, that through a cultures shared and collective experience, finally reveals that context and perhaps the ramifications of that context.  A postmodern box reveals the context and again, perhaps the ramifications, through a more explicit and sometimes ironic way.  The signifying elements of both of theses styles could not be further apart in their proliferation by marketers and advertisers and developers.  Indeed postmodern consumption and our cultures lack of meaningful signifiers reval the shallow meaning and relationship we have with our products.  Our new cultural signifiers have become the objects that we posses and our measure is how many and what type we have.

Characteristics of the Shopping Mall

The characteristics of the shopping maal can be described as a box containing pricless items to the consumer.  Once inside the box we are urged to stay, be dazzled, susped our beliefs and most importantly buy.  The postmodern consumption patterns that are the everyday norm can be characterised as such.  Shopping malls are the perfect manifestation of these principles.

Charactetristics of Style - Postmodernist

The Postmodernist box reveals nothing of its structure in the 2 dimensional image presented here.  Through our past experience of an object such as this we are able to tell that the outline shape is most likely a box.  However the text makes explicit the nature of this 2dimensional image. Venturi, Loos et al.

Characteristics of Style - Minimalist

The minimalist box reveals the structure through our high content knowledge.  That common cultural knowledge of our everyday experiences of that box tells us that the configuration of these lines forms a 3 dimensional object; a box.
 

The 2 DFO's

 

The two DFO (Direct Factory Outlet) shopping experiences provide a point of comparison between the same type of themed shopping places.  The new South Wharf facility has larger parking, a larger variety of stores, a new and more desirable place provided through the architecture.  As the Spencer Street facility has the same store type and mix but in an older less accessible format it may begin to struggle to hold its market share.

Shopping Mall Influence

Each Shopping Mall / Centre precinct has its own sphere of influence, tempting consumers to visit the facility.  This is very much dependant on the services and entertainment each facility provides.