Apparatus of Amusement: A Retail for Post Consumption | Bachelors Design Thesis

Site Context

The proposed alternate systems are experimented within an existing retail setting of a dysfunctional shopping mall, the Prime Mall of Irla Market Street, Mumbai, India. The street has a vibrant retail character that fails to reflect when the typology of a mall is inserted in such a scenario. While mapping the current use of the mall, it was concluded that 60 percent of the mall was not functioning, and hence it needed programmatic injectors to create a life for the structure around it.

Design Process

The project proposes three scales, starting at the systemic level.

1. Repurpose a decentralised system where a person gets his used objects to give a second life to them, incentivizing themselves from their self-consumption, diverting them from landfills, and getting them back to the place where they were first consumed. The objects are classified under ‘plastic household’, ‘garments fashion’ and ‘smartphone electronics,’ which are means of architectural experimentation.

2. Repurposing the mall where the dysfunctional architectural typology has its structural components retained while adding new programmatic injectors to reconfigure and critique the spatial syntax of a mall

3. The Irla Street project, where the busy retail street has heavy pedestrian footfall as well as vehicles causing traffic congestion. Hence, a proposal to make Natyakar Gadkari Marg a one-way road is implemented, giving the additional space back to the public as an approach towards streets for people. The street proposal focuses on pedestrian and market activities where a larger flux of people can be accommodated while reducing the chaos between vehicles and pedestrians.

Further, architectural strategies of amusement for engaging the consumers, labour as an energy mechanism, and roleplay as users are driving factors for the design process, with conscious design decisions on colours defining the processes. Amusement as a heightened-spectacularization of the mall engages the consumers in a hyper-real scenario where the desire to repurpose objects is directly connected to the act of pleasure and gratification.

Labour Mechanism is a co-creator of everyday objects using energy, where work and craft in a post-Fordist setting become a process of participation in the making rather than just mindlessly consuming. Roleplay is shifting a person’s job to experience the whole process instead of mere consumption. The person becomes a part of the assembly line in the production of crafts.

Decentralised system in demonstrating the various scales at which the repurpose system can take place. Built typologies and mobile communities can aid in a system that takes the load off the conventional waste system. Deconstructing the syntax of a mall would break the embedded passivity of a stereotypically centrally placed atrium by creating spaces that would change the syntax of the mall.

Repurpose as using the existing situation is an opportunity consisting of elements, qualities, and capacities that can be integrated, reactivated, and reused. Each existing structure offers materials that can drastically reduce the need for new materials. Each site permits invention and imagination.

Final Outcome

The wall of labour is the protagonist of the space. The role of the facade element as a mediated face is challenged by inserting it as a mediator between the indoors and the outdoors while holding programmatic spaces and a visual anchor. The wall becomes the protagonist because it has simple machines and mechanisms where a process takes place. Apparatus for repurposing are devices that have simple machines and mechanisms where a process takes place. A roleplayer takes part in these apparatuses to perform a task, which helps in repurposing.

The central event space is designed for the role-players’ reactions and actions recorded throughout the day, with the leaderboards displaying the role-player with the most points. Also works as a gathering place where workshops, events, and discussions on newer developments in apparatus are held.

The Hall of Experiments is designed at the end of the journey, where the paths converge, and the space is rented for exhibitions and events to spread awareness about newer developments in the field of repurposing. The labyrinth consumer’s playground is free from the hyperreal space that the apparatus of amusement offers; where the person is in a labyrinth landscape as a calmer sensescape that is away from the vibrant street. Outdoor installations can also be held in this space.

The Irla Street project holds street apparatus as well as the existing street hawkers trying to enhance the retail rhizomatic street of Natyakar Gadkari Marg. Also, the upcoming metro station will increase pedestrian footfall, which the street will be able to accommodate. The Repurpose Mobile Community, where recycling is on wheels, is an initiative where the collection and processes are concise in the size of a truck that roams around the neighbourhood and connects the nodes of these larger typologies. The facade has the functional purpose of storage as well as transparency. The collected objects and the objects in the process are stored and displayed in a transparent facade between the RCC grid.

Architectural Language:

The architectural language for the project started with repurposing the existing and not building anything brownfield. Once the structural shell was retained, the programmatic injectors were vibrant and dominated the colour of the bare concrete. Reused materials like terrazzo and debris concrete walls were used along with steel structures, giving a stark design language and a visual marker in the street and the larger context of Irla.

The journey for the role-players starts as a part of the assembly line, where you choose a path based on the anchors of retail for post-consumption, plastic households, garments, fashion, and smartphones and electronics. The role-players go through these individual processes to repurpose a specific object, which now gets a second life, taking the burden away from the landfill.

Furthermore, the project tries to reframe the role of humans in the social and ecological sphere as a shift in the current paradigm for decentralising ways to manage our objects in our ‘buy and discard’ society. The consumerist culture will keep blinding us to consume mindlessly with the jazziness and spectacle that it creates. In this architecture design thesis, a systemic change with alternate solutions has been demonstrated through an architectural exercise that opens a larger discourse among various public as well as private stakeholders by creating awareness amongst consumers.

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]