Anchors away

Among architects, the Blue City and Złote Tarasy projects have been sources of controversy. Whilst some argue that neither of these projects fit into the context of Warsaw, there are others who welcome their arrival. But those working in the field of retail do agree that the shape of things to come will be quite different to anything existing now. Those big hypermarkets might have had their
day for a start

"It's like a UFO that has landed in the city," says Jan Rycerski of Szaroszyk & Rycerski Architekci, about Złote Tarasy, and neither him nor his partner Piotr Szaroszyk will have too many kind words for Blue City as well. They believe that both designs, brainchildren of respectively American and Turkish then American architects, (with some Polish input) fail to appreciate the spirit of the city they'll be built in. Others, such as Szymon Wociechowski of APA Wojciechowski, believe on the other hand that these developments will add something of value. "It [Złote Tarasy] will give life to this part of the city [near the central railway station], which is not very attractive, as you know," he says.

Inward architecture
Adding that "the architecture is secondary to the mix of shops," at this particular project, Wojciechowski touches on a factor that many will agree is integral to the whole concept of the retail centre: that they're inward looking by definition and it is the internal experience they offer which is of greater significance to both shoppers and tenants alike, than their aesthetic contribution to the urban landscape. Not everyone is going to be satisfied by that explanation however, especially as far as the very centrally-located Złote Tarasy is concerned.
Aleksandra Zentile-Miller, of the international architectural firm Chapman Taylor, reflects on this common characteristic of large retail concerns: "Department stores often don't use windows for receiving daylight, even if they have them, because the retail activities within are inward looking and assisted by artificial lighting, which is purpose designed like on a film set." As self-enclosed environments perhaps it isn't surprising that retail projects don't concern themselves too unduly with how they appear to the outside world, which they're indeed providing an alternative to. "Retail centres are attractive from the inside," says Szymon Wojciechowski. This phenomenon is accentuated in a city such as Warsaw, whose architectural heritage was so cruelly decimated in the Second World War and then afterwards by Socialist Realism.
"They are not well knitted into the city fabric," says Aleksandra Zentile-Miller of Złote Tarasy and Blue City, "I would partly subscribe to that criticism. But you can only relate to the city fabric, if you've got a context you can relate to."
David Rogers, Senior Vice President and Senior Project Designer of the Los Angeles-based Jerde Partnership, who designed Złote Tarasy, does however claim that his project will co-exist harmoniously with the city surrounding it. Of the criticism levelled at the development's excessive "inwardness" he says: "That point of view comes from a complete lack of understanding of the project. It's just the opposite. It opens up significantly to the pedestrian traffic in the area."

Decline of the hypermarket
The French-inspired hypermarket-anchored retail centres which were the first to dominate the Polish market, no longer have much of a future in Poland, according to Aleksandra Zentile-Miller. "We have a large number of hypermarket operators in Poland, that normally would not exist in that number and variety in any other European country you could think of." And these days it is not only the French who are running them: there are Germans, British and Portuguese as well, making Poland a pretty competitive place to try and attract customers.
"I believe this will not continue, that competition will ease off and Poland will probably end up with fewer hypermarket operators. We've already observed mergers and acquisitions, such as Tesco's of HIT. Those centres which have been driven by a large hypermarket will evolve in the future," says Ms Zentile-Miller.
By this she means that other types of anchor tenants might gain bigger footholds in retail centres, such as department stores, as exists at Galeria Mokotów with Peek & Cloppenburg. "It is so far almost the only example of the true comparison mall in Poland, where there is only a small supermarket, Ahold's Hypernova model," adds the Chapman Taylor architect, who believes that "the hypermarkets will be scaled down in size or replaced by another retail offer at some point in the future. It's just a question of time."

The future is mini-anchor
For David Rogers too, the era of the one anchor tenant in a retail centre, is very much on the wane on an international scale, and he doesn't necessarily see department stores as filling in the huge space hypermarkets now take up.
"As far as trends are concerned, we're seeing the shopping centres coming down to a village centre - a community centre experience in which social interchange can take place and again retail becomes a result of that. In Europe the big department stores continue to struggle in a market where there are far too many doing the same thing and are cutting their floor plates because they don't know what to do with them," he says and maintains that the future for retail centres is "clusters of mini-anchors rather than anchors - that's universal. Anchors are being chopped up into mini-anchors as we speak. Things are getting smaller and more centralized, even in large scale pieces." And this he says, applies to Złote Tarasy.
For Szymon Wojciechowski, that project and Blue City, (which he is involved in) are what he terms the "fourth generation" of retail architecture: mixed-use developments incorporating a hotel and office buildings, to become, in his words, "a city within a city", and he calls Złote Tarasy, "a version of Las Vegas".
Though Blue City was of course originally designed by Turkish architects, it now has been stamped very firmly by an American aesthetic, (courtesy of Ed Jenkins). This Wojciechowski compares to the "cleaner German look" which is found in schemes such as Galerias Łódzka and Dominkańska, developed by ECE, which he calls "very clear projects" with a "simple design". The American way on the other hand is "more playful, with a lot of colours" and cites the example of Blue City and the fountain there, which shoppers will see spurting water up to twenty six metres high.