Preliminary project for a shopping mall (2012)

Architects: Marco Facchinetti, Luca De Stefani

Category: Building/Architecture

Date: 2012

City: Minsk (Byelorussia)

Tags: Building, commercial, shopping mall, garden

Urban design

The construction of a new shopping mall in the metropolitan area of Minsk provided an opportunity for reflection on the type of building and its meaning. In a growing country with an expanding metropolitan area characterized by rapid and chaotic phenomena, the building of a structure like a shopping mall can provide an opportunity for reflection on the role of a container of private functions for public use.

For this reason, the project expanded to include a large winter garden, not only bringing inside something otherwise unobtainable in such a cold region, but also taking up the tradition of the structures for wintertime leisure so deeply rooted in the history of these countries; moreover, this solution makes it possible to alter the plan and layout of the mall, two traditionally monotonous elements.

An entrance gallery mediates immediately between the space of the garden and the space of the mall. It is as though the garden forced its way between the structures traditionally devoted to shopping, thus becoming central in the layout and leaving the sides and outer areas of the construction to the shops and larger commercial surfaces. The definition of a strong, central and important structure inside the building offers a constraint for future constructions in the area which, if correctly interpreted, can give orderly shape to the complex and to the territory of the future.