Johannesburg’s newest mall is tailor-made for the younger generation, but it is already beginning to age Melinda Silverman Architects hate malls. They hate their looks -ugly boxes adrift in a sea of cars – and they hate the way shopping malls have destroyed old-fashioned city streets. They hate the combination of windowless concrete brutalism and rampant consumerist spectacle. Malls lend themselves to intellectual disdain. Maybe that’s because they’re so successful. What other contemporary institution has the same amazing ability to pull in the crowds? When architects get to design their own malls their reservations evaporate – and more often than not, they design more big grey boxes. But there are some architects who do manage to bring their considerable talents to offer some alternatives. The Zone, a mall recently opened in Johannesburg’s Rosebank, represents one of these interesting alternatives.
Designed by Louis Karol, one of South Africa’s most successful commercial architects, together with American firm DDC, this new mall combines American glitz with Karol’s skill in designing shopping centres that connect disparate parts of the urban fabric. Malls tend to be about self-containment, but Karol’s approach is to use the pedestrian routes through malls to create links to other parts of the city, an approach he pioneered in his Golden Acre mall in Cape Town. The Golden Acre used tunnels and bridges to link the railway station to Adderley Street, Cape Town’s main shopping boulevard. Also included among the innovations in the Golden Acre was the use of skylights, allowing natural light into the building. These design elements are evident in the Zone. Pedestrian routes through the mall connect to the passages of the adjoining office buildings, and escalators and stairs link the main shopping level in the Zone into the courtyard spaces of Mutual Gardens below. As a result the mall is not an isolated box, but adds to the already intricate network of pedestrian pathways that make Rosebank a vital shopping area. Natural light penetrates the Zone through an elaborate glazed lantern at the centre around which the movie theatres are arranged. The main design feature of the Zone is a gigantic set of escalators linking the shopping area at first- floor level to the movie houses above. This allows the passing parade of movie-goers and shoppers to act as the main focus of the mall. This use of movement to enliven the space is reinforced by exposing the working parts of the escalator mechanism: a glass box on the underside of the escalator reveals the wheels and cogs in motion. Less successful is the novel use of plastic for the escalator treads: this is already showing signs of wear and tear. These subtleties are likely to be lost on the average mall-rat whose attentions will be overwhelmed by the bombardment of disco lighting effects and multicoloured neon strips.
Compounding this assault on the senses are countless television screens suspended from the ceilings, each tuned to a different MTV-type programme. The incessant buzz of electric drills could be the noise of builders putting the finishing touches to some shop interiors or the sound of industrial rock. It is hard to tell. This makes quiet conversation in the centre’s coffee bars somewhat difficult. Do not expect the philosophical outpourings of South Africa’s Jean-Paul Sarte to emanate from any of the cafs in this centre. But “shoppertainment” malls of this kind are not aimed at adults. Their target clientele are teenyboppers with large amounts of cash and equally large amounts of time. Trendy clothes shops and music stores complement the anchor tenant, Galaxy World, a vast cave of a games arcade, in which the gloom is lit by winking-blinking video games, a bowling alley with neon carpets, a pool room and a bar. No surface of the Zone has escaped the decorator touch. Bands of timber panelling, burnished sheet metal and looping neon lights contribute to the frenzied atmosphere. Even the highly polished floors are glitter-encrusted, and potentially hazardous to kugels in platform shoes. Sometimes these decorative effects are clever: old CDs stuck to the walls afford a polka- dot effect and consolidate the music/movie/movement metaphor of the mall. But the trompe l’oil paintings of crumbling brickwork on perfectly sound brick walls are a contrived attempt at grunge, out of character with the rest of the interior.
The decorative effects on the exterior, particularly alongside the Admiral’s Court arcade, are more successful. Ironically, an architectural language derived from the Constructivists – a school of avante-garde Soviet architects at work immediately after the revolution – is evident in the tower at the corner. With its concrete frame and colourful lettering, the tower resembles the headquarters of Lenin’s Pravda newspaper. All of which demonstrates that there are no revolutionary icons that cannot be smoothly appropriated to serve the needs of the market economy. When Lenin spoke of the need for a party he couldn’t possibly have had the Zone in mind. Find the Zone at 177 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg. Call (011) 788 1130 for information
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