The Myer Centre - Rundle Mall
Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:24 pm
I’ve thought about this for a while. This is what I think is needed to to ‘fix’ the Myer Centre. I don't agree with the idea that 5 levels of retail is too high for Adelaide. Myer is a poor design and has given people a bad impression.
The food court downstairs is grungy, cramp and dark. Embrace this with a gritty, urban yet classy decor – think Melbourne Central or The Galeries in Sydney. I think the worst thing about the food court is it just another shopping centre squeezed into a basement. There’s no reason it has to have the same decor as the rest of the centre.
Put something on the top floors that’s worth going to – another food court. The Mall has the demand for more food courts as demonstrated by Rundle Place. Replace the roof with as many big skylights as possible. This will contrast nicely with the basement food court.
Have an express escalator from the mall all the way up to the top floor food court. Get people up there as quickly as possible. Don’t have an express escalator down. I’m not certain on how this could be done – maybe by having it run east-west across the inside of the Mall facade?
Make the North Tce entrance grander and more open. Yes, there is constraint from the heritage facade but a creative design should do the trick. A visitor could walk past the centre along North Tce and not even notice it’s there. The entrance hall is daggy.
Open up the Stephens Place face of the centre as much as possible. Do as much as possible to turn it into an active laneway rather than a glorified driveway.
Lifts: Because they’re in a really obvious location, people use them rather than escalators to go up only two or three floors. Because of that, they’re overcrowded and slow.
It’d be better to have the lifts in one group of four to one side of the centre rather than two groups of two. People will think they’re faster because a lift will come more often. So I suggest relocating them to the KWS side of the centre, right next to the escalators.
Replace the escalators: turn one escalator around in each group so they’re in an X formation (think David Jones). It takes too long to get up and down because there’s too much walking between each escalator. People are lazy.
Have the up escalators in each side face the mall entrances, not hidden in the back corner of the ground floor.
The escalators in Myer: Replace them, again with ones in an X formation.
And of course the Rundle Mall facade – I think the worst part about it is they’ve admitted that it’s crap and neglected it. Now with the proposed upgrade it’s going to be a horrid mix of modern and 90s style. Either clean up the whole thing or replace the whole thing.
I think the repositioning of the lifts and escalators and the new upstairs food court would be enough to pull people upstairs and make the upper floors viable to tenants.
The food court downstairs is grungy, cramp and dark. Embrace this with a gritty, urban yet classy decor – think Melbourne Central or The Galeries in Sydney. I think the worst thing about the food court is it just another shopping centre squeezed into a basement. There’s no reason it has to have the same decor as the rest of the centre.
Put something on the top floors that’s worth going to – another food court. The Mall has the demand for more food courts as demonstrated by Rundle Place. Replace the roof with as many big skylights as possible. This will contrast nicely with the basement food court.
Have an express escalator from the mall all the way up to the top floor food court. Get people up there as quickly as possible. Don’t have an express escalator down. I’m not certain on how this could be done – maybe by having it run east-west across the inside of the Mall facade?
Make the North Tce entrance grander and more open. Yes, there is constraint from the heritage facade but a creative design should do the trick. A visitor could walk past the centre along North Tce and not even notice it’s there. The entrance hall is daggy.
Open up the Stephens Place face of the centre as much as possible. Do as much as possible to turn it into an active laneway rather than a glorified driveway.
Lifts: Because they’re in a really obvious location, people use them rather than escalators to go up only two or three floors. Because of that, they’re overcrowded and slow.
It’d be better to have the lifts in one group of four to one side of the centre rather than two groups of two. People will think they’re faster because a lift will come more often. So I suggest relocating them to the KWS side of the centre, right next to the escalators.
Replace the escalators: turn one escalator around in each group so they’re in an X formation (think David Jones). It takes too long to get up and down because there’s too much walking between each escalator. People are lazy.
Have the up escalators in each side face the mall entrances, not hidden in the back corner of the ground floor.
The escalators in Myer: Replace them, again with ones in an X formation.
And of course the Rundle Mall facade – I think the worst part about it is they’ve admitted that it’s crap and neglected it. Now with the proposed upgrade it’s going to be a horrid mix of modern and 90s style. Either clean up the whole thing or replace the whole thing.
I think the repositioning of the lifts and escalators and the new upstairs food court would be enough to pull people upstairs and make the upper floors viable to tenants.