From the Queen Victoria Market Website:
http://www.qvm.com.au/corporate.aspx
The Company
Queen Victoria Market Pty Ltd (“the Company”), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Melbourne City Council (“the Council”) has operated since July 1997 to manage and develop the Queen Victoria Market (“the Market”).
The Queen Victoria Market occupies 7 hectares within the Melbourne Central Business District and has been operated by the Council or the Company for 130 years.
There are 140 leasehold premises and over 600 periodical licence stallholders. It is a well-known historic and cultural icon for the City of Melbourne and is the largest and most original of all the retail markets in the metropolitan area. It has national and international significance as an historic open market.
The Market is very much a fresh food market based on fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, chicken and delicatessen lines. General lines include clothing, footwear and accessories. Giftware and souvenirs have become an important part of the Market with particular appeal to interstate and overseas tourists as well as segments of the local market. Take away food and coffee have had significant growth over the last few years.
The Market first opened on Sundays in 1979, initially trading in general merchandise which considerably strengthened revenue and its consumer appeal for general lines. Fresh food trading on Sundays commenced in 1994. Since then the Sunday trade in the food area has developed well.
The general trading area has experienced substantially increased competition as a result of more options for shoppers, especially on Sundays.
The Sunday Market has also become a major shopping and tourist destination in its own right. Food trading on Sundays has grown substantially. Queen St, on Sundays, with plants, coffee, pancakes and other offerings, is now a strong, colourful trading area sought by traders. The theme of Sunday being a “family” day is supplemented by live entertainment with bands, fashion parades and other activities in Queen Street.
There have been many changes during the Market's operation over the years. A strategy has been implemented to make the facilities of the Market more available outside normal Market operating times, especially in the evenings. This strategy, of encouraging additional uses, has been very successful. There are now regular annual events such as Opera in the Market, which attract large audiences each year plus a major seasonal event, the Suzuki Night Market.
The Company launched the first Night Market 11 years ago. This event is aimed at bringing local residents and tourists into the Market on Wednesday nights over summer months. This has been an excellent success with over 300,000 people visiting the Suzuki Night Market during the last season. Market research each year shows excellent feedback on the acceptance of the event from both patrons and traders.
The Company has also introduced new features to the traditional day Market. Market tours, introduced in the early 1990s continue to be popular and this year the Market expects to have over 4,500 tour patrons. A Wine Market, to complement the food offering now operates in I Shed along with Organic Fruit and Vegetables. This was initially launched on Sundays only to provide an outlet for small wineries around Victoria to sell their wines in addition to their cellar door sales. The Wine Market was slow to start but feedback from participating wineries indicates good steady growth and acceptance by patrons and is now trading three days per week (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays).
The Organics offering at the Market has grown with the inclusion of an Organic dry goods trader, an Organic butcher operating in the Meat Hall and an Organic café in Therry St. This strengthens the Market’s position as the place to shop for Organic food with a full complement of Organic goods available. The demand for Organic food is forecast to have continued growth and the strong core of Organic food retailers at the Market is an excellent drawcard for the Market overall.
This year the Market expects to have approximately 10 million or more shoppers visit the site. This is an overall is an excellent indication that the Market is still relevant and an important Melbourne institution. The challenge is to maintain the Market’s relevance with constantly changing customer demand, expectations, and competition but also preserve the heritage aspects of the site. Patrons for the Market mostly come from local suburbs but also are drawn from outer suburbs, even Victorian towns and cities, eg Geelong, Ballarat, especially on weekends. Another important group of patrons are tourists, from regional Victoria, interstate and international. Tourists are important, especially for the non food area of the Market.
Retailing in Melbourne continues to be highly competitive with an estimated increase of 30% in retail space over the last 5 years. Competition for traders in the Market includes a constantly increasing number of outlet stores, extended trading hours, increasingly high standards of merchandising and good customer service. There have been major new centres opened, eg QV, GPO, Federation Square, Melbourne Central, and now, the Southern Cross Station in Spencer Street. These trends mean it is vitally important to constantly position shopping at the Market as a rich experience; a lot more than simple shopping. The traditional market theme of low price is simply not sufficient to maintain and grow Market patronage in today’s competitive environment. There has to be a proactive and continual reinforcement of the Market as being a satisfying and fulfilling place to visit for essentials, interesting or exotic goods.
The Market attracts a diverse range of customers from buyers of fresh foods to international and domestic travellers shopping for a range of products and seeking a quintessential “Melbourne experience”. The Marketing Strategy seeks to position the Market as a place for shoppers to consistently find; Quality, a broad range of products, uniqueness of product range, highly competitive prices, and a great shopping experience overall which is different from normal retail centres.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Deconstructing Consumption
An Attempt to deconstruct the spatial make up of the mall to reveal a more "open" interesting space.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
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 - 100 000 people - Massing
- 120 floors
- 440m high building
- 2517000m2 worth of growing and floor area
- 836100m2 worth of crop floor area
- 361 floors
- 1324m high building
- 25170004m2 worth of growing and floor area
Sunday Market = Local
A survay of the Southbank Sunday Market revealed that traders had come from or inside the periphery of the city and the surrounding satelite cities.
Market = National
A survey of fruit and vegetable trader at Queen Victoria Market reveals a supply chain of produce grown locally and nationally. Goods are transported via a truck.
Shopping Mall = Global
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......
Food Supply
Melbourne's CBD poulation has grown rapidly since the inception of the Melbourne 2030 development plan. An increase in residential supply is set to continue into the future. The Spencer street site has the potential to deliver food to 100 000 people within a nominal 1km walking distance zone.
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.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
FutuRetail
Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/rethinking-the-mall/
Marketing a New Mall
Changing the consumption behaviors in an environment where cues and signals encourage over consumption is a difficult prospect and one which is sure to take revolt among the developers and financiers and beneficiaries of the economic windfall of consumption. More than likely consumers will consume a particular resource until there is nothing left unless a change in information occurs, regulations are put in place and perhaps moral sensibilities are heightened. If environmental behavior is socially influenced then the spaces where we collectively learn from must lead this evolution of our cultural consciousness. From a psychological and philosophical stand point, reducing consumption depends on more than the built environment, but where design has a role, new environments where over consumption is viewed as perhaps silly can be created. This cognitive approach reinforces the approach of redesigning these consumption spaces and thus reframing the signals in our environment.
Some certain societal elements have sought to cast aside the allure of consumption both in the past and currently. Here in Melbourne the CERES facility in Brunswick with facilities such as a community farm and “The Bike Shed” promote a lifestyle choice which is decidedly anti consumption. Situationalist activities whereby experience and play are foremost, such as the recently witnessed “Melbourne Zombie Shuffle”, hark to the French equivalent from yesteryear teach us that through shared cultural experience a new connection in the urban environment can be made.
From a Psychological perspective, consumerism will never make full a life or make it more worthwhile. Psychological studies have derided the myth that happiness does not in fact correlate to material possession but instead with healthy relationships and meaningful leisure and work. Meaning therefore, does not stem from the TV or from our consumption spaces. From a social perspective new spaces need to be developed where the status quo is overturned and consumption is viewed as a need which has consequence, the Newtonian law; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If consumption has become normalised through our environment, cognitive learnt behavior of a new type of environment can generate a new cultural ideal, created through environs which actually connect us to the things that make what we need?
Mine is an idealistic standpoint, this is something I have tried to divorce myself from to no effect. I want to change the world. I see shopping malls as an unnecessary evil, a corrupted tool for the already corrupt. However I am not naive to the fact that shopping is here to stay and that indeed these spaces are vital, not only the economy but to our cultural learning and structure.
However I believe, through this research, that the deep structure of a new type becomes a vital new interface between production and consumption. If we occupy a liminal space in our mind at the point of consumption then in opening up our liminal spaces, our consumption spaces to something more than consumptive reinforcement, a new relationship and awareness of what it really is, these things, these signals we consume can develop.
There are already spaces within our environment which are consumption spaces but which foster a product knowledge and a social interaction, the market, the farmers market et al. has evolved very little in its principle of direct interaction with consumers and producers from its origins at the Greek Agora. Consumers have a very good idea of where their produce comes from, coupled with the social interaction that occurs from the purchase creating a cognitive social grounding. Here we consume as social and moral beings at a level unlike that of a shopping mall environment. In places like markets we actually use more of our human insight and intelligence to evaluate, distinguish, interact, negotiate and then finally purchase a product. The key to the spiritually sustainable lifestyle is to work for our pleasure, rather than have someone hand it to us on a platter. It s my supposition that material goals which define our consumer culture can be replaced with transcendental goals in which we understand our place in the world and the effects of our decisions. This capacity for an understanding that we are a part of a greater entity than ourselves is a uniquely human characteristic, albeit one that we as a species has not yet mastered.
Positioning
Producer - Consumer
Make/Grow - Buy
Surface - Interface
Access - Proximity
Size/Scale - Sociability
Global Outlook - Local Design
Shopper Revolt
The relatively new phenomenon of the shopper revolt though becomes particularly interesting as the shopper reveals he/she is not merely the object of a technical and patriarchal discourse and design. The shopper is also a subject who interprets his/her environment and appropriates meaning to his/her purpose and in this case is aware.
The time spent shopping reinforces our desires through the environment in which we shop, as shopping is still a social and spatial activity regardless of the recent Internet shop type, reinforced through a constant bombardment of desire related messages on billboards, TV and the Internet. Indeed the act of purchasing has already been catalysed through these media outlets and the glut of information that the post modern consumer has at his/her fingertips. This wealth of information has a two fold effect, as shopping becomes the dominant mode of contemporary public life there now persists a high cultural disdain for conspicuous mass consumption resulting from a puritanical fear of the moral corruption inherent in commercialism and materialism. As a result an increase in offbeat, alternative trading posts and lifestyle warriors have began to emerge. Communities are banding together to produce more and consume less as cultural moral consciousness becomes a new trend. Almost 40 percent of people aged between 18 to 30 prefer to affiliate their purchases to brands that are culturally, socially and environmentally conscious. The norm of what might be socially and environmentally acceptable may be changing and perhaps there is a hope that this will continue to grow.
The time spent shopping reinforces our desires through the environment in which we shop, as shopping is still a social and spatial activity regardless of the recent Internet shop type, reinforced through a constant bombardment of desire related messages on billboards, TV and the Internet. Indeed the act of purchasing has already been catalysed through these media outlets and the glut of information that the post modern consumer has at his/her fingertips. This wealth of information has a two fold effect, as shopping becomes the dominant mode of contemporary public life there now persists a high cultural disdain for conspicuous mass consumption resulting from a puritanical fear of the moral corruption inherent in commercialism and materialism. As a result an increase in offbeat, alternative trading posts and lifestyle warriors have began to emerge. Communities are banding together to produce more and consume less as cultural moral consciousness becomes a new trend. Almost 40 percent of people aged between 18 to 30 prefer to affiliate their purchases to brands that are culturally, socially and environmentally conscious. The norm of what might be socially and environmentally acceptable may be changing and perhaps there is a hope that this will continue to grow.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Consuming 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
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