The Runway

THE RUNWAY

INNOVATING RETAIL AND CONSUMERISM IN SINGAPOREMArch .University of Tasmania .Australia

THE RUNWAYRETAIL . LEARNING . LIVING IN THE CITYa graduation project . JENSON LEE

RESUME

EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA, AUSTRALIAMaster in Architecture, Dec 2010Bachelor in Environmental Design, Dec 2008

NANYANG ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, SINGAPORE (NAFA)Certificate in Basic Jewelry Design, Jun 2007

SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC, SINGAPOREDiploma in Architectural Technology, Jul 2005

JENSON LEE

[email protected]

http://theperfectshop.posterous.comhttp://therepercussionist.daportfolio.com

ARCHITECTURAL + GRAPHIC PROFICIENCY

Excellent free-hand conceptual sketch designs.Strong Visual and graphical aptitude in presentation

layouts and dynamic presentations.

Spatial and Urban design / Planning of macro to

micro scales.

Proficient CAD drafting in AutoCAD.

Meticulous and efficient in physical model making.

Knowledge in DC/ BP; Contractual Documentations.

Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop, Indesign and

Illustrator CS4.

Knowledge in 3D modelling softwares: Rhinocerous,

Google Sketchup and Autodesk 3D Max.

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THE RUNWAYa graduation project: jenson lee

Resume

WORK EXPERIENCE

CPG CONSULTANTSDec 2009 - Feb 2010 Jurong General HospitalSingapore General Hospital Master Plan

DEG ARCHITECTSSep 2007 - Feb 2008, Nov 2008 - Feb 2009NUS Business SchoolAssumption Pathway SchoolSingapore Polytechnic Master PlanPublic Housing Upgrading programmes

SINGAPORE GARDEN CITYApr 2005 - Aug 2005Nassim Condominium Project Landscape Master Plan : Dubai

REFERENCES

Dr Ceridwen OwenActing Program Director (Architecture)

University of TasmaniaSchool of Architecture

Prof Stephen LooProfessor of Architecture

University of TasmaniaSchool of Architecture

INTRODUCTION 05

INFORMATIONS 07

THE WALL OF SHOPPING 09

CONCEPTS + MANIFESTATIONS 15

PROGRAMMING 19

THE RUNWAY PRESENTATION 27

THE RUNWAY

RESUME

CONTENTS

The Runway is a mixed-use development of White shopping mall, SOFD - the School of Fashion and Design and W Singapore boutique hotel. The project will be located in Bugis, Singapore, where it is known as a hub for arts, culture, and vibrant city life.

The project endeavours to synthesize retail and education, tourism and living into a single cohesive entity. The Runway project seeks to challenge the provocative limit of retail by identifying the authenticity, consistency and experience consumers crave; translating these desires into architectural and programmatic manifestations. The project also seeks to empower consumers and students alike through education and bridge the distance between students, professionals and general public.

THREE TYPES OF SHOPPING WILL FORM THE FRAMEWORK OF RETAIL - BOUTIQUE, INTERNET AND BARTERING.

Spanning both micro and macro scales, the Runway Project will focus on creating a new model of retail by redefining the act of shopping through constant innovations with technology (online shopping), free shopping (bartering) and chic’ness (exclusive boutique shopping). Singapore is a modern city with an estimated 75 shopping malls based on a generic pattern of themed shopping and merchandising; food and beverage, and entertainment.

INTRODUCTIONTHE INNOVATION OF RETAIL

With this in mind, the Runway aims to break away from this mediocrity and reinvent retail as an activity of material, emotional and creative satisfaction. The concept of retail in the Runway is all about authenticity, consistency and experience, in a society where consumers shops less and demand more from each experience, spend less and demand more value.

THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE THRIVES FROM STORES THAT ARE RELEVANT, FRESH AND ENGAGING, OFFERING AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION, INTERACTION AND EXCITEMENT TO CONSUMERS.

With that in mind, innovations to shopping is a necessity. Thus the marriage of internet shopping with boutique chic in the Wall of Shopping and Ebay Retail boxes; condensing goods and shop spaces, creating an ever-changing shopfront for the mall. Shoppers should and need to gain knowledge from shopping; they need to be empowered and be inspired through the act of retail. A shopping mall can be seen as a school, with constant engagements and understanding. The School of Fashion and Design is conceptualised and hybridised in the shopping mall as a result.

05 -06


Introduction

RETAILING IS AN EXTREMELY COMPLICATED AND WELL-RESEARCHED BUSINESS, YET SUCCEEDING IN IT IS STILL PERHAPS CLOSER TO MAGIC THAN ANYTHING ELSE. - TUIJA SEIPELL

INFORMATIONSTHE PERFECT SITE FOR THE PERFECT CITY

URBAN FORM

The site is situated in Bugis, Singapore, a downtown district comprising a diverse range of programs that include retail, offices and institutions. The site is located between the civic and commercial district of Singapore, and Marina waterfront in a macro urban context.

The site is located within a close proximity to the Liang Seah Street shop houses, The Gateway and Parkview Square office towers, Parco Bugis Junction and Iluma shopping mall.

Public access is facilitated by bus stops along main roads around the site and a new MRT station located directly in its basement level. The site is accessible on all 4 sides with major roads - Rochor, Beach and Bridge Road which are major arterial link between the city and heartland and Tan Quee Lan Street.

The site has an area of approximately 14,500m2, plot ratio of 3.8 and a buildable area of 55,100m2.

CLIENTS

The Capitaland Corporation pledges to develop quality human capital, building for people to build people.

The Ministry of Education of Singapore envisions thinking schools which promotes a unique environment for the creative minds.

The W Hotel Corporation aims to offer a unique lifestyle experience through contemporary living and retail concepts with a dose of edge.

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Informations

A feature Boutique wall displaying exclusive and one-off designer consumer products designed by local and international artists as well as the design students from SOFD. A great glazed feature wall standing eight levels, this mega vending machine offers an endless stream of products that will feed the hunger of every shopper.

It’s an original, hybridised digital and physical version of auction house that shoppers bid for the products they love digitally while physically in contact with the products. Preview platforms on each levels will become sites of display for the on-going auction; accumulating bidders in a place at one time though they are bidding digitally, thus creating a tangible event around the digital auction.

THE DEMAND FOR NEWNESS IN THE EVER-CHANGING SCENE OF RETAIL CALLS FOR INNOVATIONS: IDEAS THAT WILL TINGLE, EXCITE SHOPPERS AND MAKE THEM ANTICIPATE WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT.

The shopping wall gives retail a rustic and industrial ambience where shoppers physically engaged in the act of shopping through internet with a click on their laptop and iphones. The anticipation and excitement when seeing products carried from one end to another and cross-levels by giant mechanical arms and conveyor belts will bring the experience of shopping to a new level.

THE WALL OF SHOPPINGTHE TANGIBLE EBAY.COM

The bidding can go as long as 20 hours a day, concurrent with activities like parties and movies on the roof when the night falls. The wall will showcase endless possibilities of excitement, efficiency and anticipation to shoppers; and they never knew they had always wanted to shop till they drop until now.

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Subheading

THE RUNWAYRETAIL | LEARNING | LIVING IN THE CITY

introduction . 03

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Wall of Shopping

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THE RUNWAYa graduation project: jenson leeAuction and Movie on the Roof

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The Runway: perspective from Beach Road

CONCEPTS + MANIFESTATIONSCONCERNS, IDEAS AND THE BIG PICTURE

HYBRIDISATION

The School of Fashion and Design (SOFD) is fully hybridised into the shopping mall and boutique hotel with fragmented elements of the SOFD lodged within the ranks of boutique shops, cohabiting retail with education and linking consumption to production.

Studios, and workshops with exhibition venues within offer opportunities to shoppers to become both spectators and participants of on-going classes and seminars.

THE NOTION OF KNOWLEDGE AND RETAIL BOTH POINT TOWARDS EMPOWERMENT.

Shoppers will return home with more than purchased merchandises but an inspired mind and different shopping experience.

Exclusively designed products - linen, robes and crockery to name a few are made available to hotel guests by design students that reflects individuality and intimacy. This way, students are able to gain exposure by designing for potential patrons and clients; and guests will be immensely impressed and pampered.

The W Hotel Corporation aims to offer a unique lifestyle experience through contemporary living and retail concepts with a dose of edge.

WHITE CANVAS

The Wwhite Canvas Space is an autonomous cell; a meeting ground for art, media, fashion, technology and the public.

It is versatile and morphable to suit the ever-changing nature of fashion and retail. It opens up as a front yard of the project, inviting shoppers and students to be both spectators and participants of the current event.

A WIDE VARIETY OF EVENTS FROM FASHION SHOWS TO OPEN-AIR MOVIES OR YET UNIMAGINABLE PERFORMANCES CAN HAPPEN HERE.

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Concepts + Manifestations

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY The White canvas event spaces and public domain within the shopping mall are expanded through condensing retail elements within boutique stores and the Shopping Wall, which allow shoppers and students to appropriate them.

SPECTACLE OF CONSUMPTION VIA THE WALL OF SHOPPING WITH DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS VIA INDUSTRIAL MECHANICAL ARMS AND CONVEYOR-BELTS ALLOWS RETAIL TO BECOME AN AFFAIR OF EXCITEMENT AND ANTICIPATIONS FOR SHOPPERS.

Micro-economic opportunities are created with Ebay retail boxes and the Shopping Wall where retail spaces can be rented by the display area instead of shop space.

Ebay retail boxes also promote the culture of goods exchange and bartering; with owners of second-hand goods exchanging their merchandises through one owner depositing his products in the ebay box and designated customer retrieiving them and placing his own goods into the box.

CHOREOGRAPHY

The flow of movement of both merchandise and human are choreographed in a crisscross fashion to enhance and maintain the spectacle of the wall of shopping with shoppers.

THE PROPOSAL FEATURES A RETAIL DESIGN WHICH CAREFULLY FUSE URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE, SHOPPING ARCHITECTURE AND HUMAN TRAFFIC PATTERNS INTO DESTINATIONS OF DELIGHT.

The mall will become more than just a destination; rather an extension of one’s daily commute and one’s daily life - where purchasing a dress, doing a manicure, listening to a talk of jewellery design and having a meal can all fit within a single routine.

MATERIALITYEach programs will adopt its own unique materials in the project. The School of Fashion and Design will feature a series of cantilevered boxes clad with timber sun-shading louvers to extend its visibility within the project. It will also create an instant impression of the locations of studios, as well as identification of the School as a joint entity within the mall.

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Concept Diagrams

PROGRAMMING + LEVELING

THE SHOPPING MALL

The building contains a diverse collection of retail boutiques, SOFD graduate stores and a eight-level high feature Wall of Shopping. In addition the mall houses Ebay retail boxes for bartering and online shopping in public spaces. Event spaces in the mall - White Canvas spaces, serves as exhibition spaces for exhibitions, fashion shows, workshops, art classes and also performance space for bands and plays.

THE SCHOOL OF FASHION The building contains reception, administrative and office spaces, design studios, fabrication workshops and facilities, photography darkrooms and modelling studios as well as a Design Library. The building also houses computer labs and a 250-seat auditorium for lectures, presentations, and business functions. The SOFD will present graduate boutique shops within the mall in addition to workshops and studios.

THE BOUTIQUE HOTEL

W Hotel consists reception, foyer and a collection of retail boutiques, restaurants and cafes; bars and lounges. It also houses meeting / event spaces, business centres for the business executives, gyms and spas and hotel guests rooms.

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Programming + Leveling

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Street Edges on Tan Quee Lan Street

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Detail Programming

SOFD 24-HOUR EXHIBITION SOFD DESIGN LIBRARY SHOP FRONTS ALONG TAN QUEE LAN STREET

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Programming + Leveling

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Elevations + Sections

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Elevations + Sections

THE PERFECT SHOP

INTRODUCTION

THE LOGIC OF SHOPPING

Shopping can be seen as a distinct relation between the form (the arcade and mall) and programs (activities of retail) that defines shopping. These two unique typologies of form and program create a discrepancy at the basis of shopping where the contradiction between the limits of form and excess enabled by program.

THE SHOPPING MALL HAS LIMITLESS POTENTIAL, WHETHER AS A CENTRE OF ENTERTAINMENT, OR FOSTERS THE IDENTITY OF A NEW TOWN OR THE CITY ITSELF BY ACTING AS THE CENTRE OF THE TOWN OR CITY.

This potential has exceeded the physical constraints of the shopping mall. I agree with the statement that what drives the mall to represent the effects of the city is actually the activity of shopping and thus its ability to surpass the potential and constraints of its forms meant that the logic of shopping lies in the its programmatic potentials than its actual form.

A SHOPPING MALL NAMED SINGAPORE

Rem Koolhaas remarked that Singapore sees itself as a shopping centre. This self-image of nationhood states the urban conceptualization of the nation. After more than 20 years of committed urban planning, Singapore no longer sees itself as a city that can be planned in the traditional way.

Singapore regarded itself as an urban condition having a new degree of economic integration and exchange which would be best developed as a series of highly porus, multi-functional cells.

Adapting the recently-coined economic concept of ‘coopetition,’ Singapore has generated a new urban model to optimize and expand its domain. The city has abandoned the traditional urban master plan in favor of what it calls a ‘cluster network:’ a planning diagram which links diverse programs, infrastructure, and consumer products into an extremely dynamic model for national growth.

There is an estimated 75 malls in Singapore today, with more constructions underway. The total land area of Singapore measured up to 710 square kilometers, averaging out to be one mall per 9.5 square kilometers.

Apart from these shopping malls, there are a greater number of retail stores housed in restored colonial period shop houses in various areas in the island.Since the 1980s, shopping has been prioritized as

a prime factor in Singapore’s urban renewal policies for the Central Area and surrounding new town developments. (Koolhaas, 1995) These policies laid the foundation of a culture in shopping by determining retail types, locations, and densities in the downtown hub and surrounding town centres. In a decade, the program of shopping achieved a critical mass and density.

RESPONDING TO THE RAPID GROWING LEVEL OF USER SATURATION, SINGAPORE ADOPTED A POLICY OF COOPETITION.

This has been evident where malls in Singapore, regardless of scale from a cluster of retail stores, individual buildings or larger urban spaces. Stores are located all together to compete and cooperate: their close proximity to one another intensifies the rivalry between stores in their war for higher profits, and attracting consumers into a concerted scenario of converged retail simultaneously.

The relationships among shops aren’t hostile, even though they are constantly competing to attract shoppers into their individual realms of retail environment. The key importance of coopetition is the acknowledgement the benefits of clustered retail.

The urbanity policies and implementations which led to the constant growth of Singapore’s economy assured the continuity of trade and commerce, and on the grassroots level, growing retail and shopping culture.

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Introduction

THEPERFECTSHOP.POSTEROUS.COM

THE RETAIL DIRECTORY REFLECTING THE URBAN LIFESTYLE EVERY INDIVIDUAL POSSESS. WE APPROPRIATE OUR PRESENCE WITH A TOUCH OF INDIVIDUALITY THAT DEFINES OUR STYLES AND BELIEFS. THIS DIRECTORY IS A GUIDE FOR PERSONAL AFFILIATION TO THE STYLE WE ARE, THE LIFE WE LOVE AND THE FASHION WE WANT. IT LINKS PEOPLE WHO APPRECIATE THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY RETAIL TOGETHER.- THEPERFECTSHOP

RETAIL DIRECTORY

It is with this concept that spawns the idea of the online retail directory introducing retail stores from around the globe, picking unique and engaging retail from the everyday mediocre shops that we face in events of necessity.

Three key factors are identified to a retail store: space, merchandise and service. Each factor is vital to the shaping of a unique retail experience for each individual consumer who would linger, shop and transverse through these retail stores.

The retail directory is aimed to reflect the unique urban lifestyle and choices every individual possess. It links people who appreciate the concept of quality retail together. We appropriate our presence with a touch of individuality that defines our styles and beliefs. This directory is a guide for personal affiliation to the style we are, the life we love and the fashion we want.

SHOPPING SHOULD TO BE CELEBRATED IN THE MOST FASHIONABLE WAY POSSIBLE. RETAIL IS A DEFINITION OF A LIFESTYLE. IT TRANSCENDS THE SPATIAL DEFINES OF A SHOP AND BEYOND THE BORDERS OF GEOGRAPHY.

3 CONDITIONS OF RETAIL

Space is defined as the interior spatial articulation of the retail store, this include openings, furniture and zoning of spaces for merchandise.

The materiality is also crucial and will be explored through the retail directory. Materials bring warmth and sooth the senses, or keep consumers on their toes with tensions, evoking emotions and bring memories to individual who resonate with each spatial setting.

Merchandise refers to the products that are meticulously packaged and displayed for the visual and sensual treats of the shoppers. The sophistication of products and level of engagement they have with shoppers also creates interactions between them and the service staffs.

Service is the level of attention, courtesy and initiatives of retail staffs. This is the variable human factor that can make or break a retail experience. A store can be wonderfully engaging through its spatial articulations and merchandise; but a bad service would definitely spoil a consumer’s experience with the store.

Thus, it is with the above understandings upon which the retail directory is created and based.

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theperfectshop.com

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The Perfect Shop Editorial

Documents

The Runway