I recently dug up an article called “Labyrinthine Design” by Henry Petroski I read last year in Exhibitions: Processes, Procedures, Pragmatics. One of the different types of labyrinths Petroski discusses is the grocery store. Granted, there are of course differences between a grocery store and a shopping mall, but I thought his description of the ideal store was illuminating:

“From the store owner or manager’s point of view, the perfect layout for a supermarket might be a very long, very narrow building with but a single aisle (or, better yet, a single shelf) running the entire length of the store, with the only entrance on one end and the only checkout counters on the other. In such a store, the customer would have to pass by every single item on display and so be reminded or tempted to buy more than is on a shopping list” (Petroski, 82).

He is essentially describing a mall, of course with some artistic liberties. When malls are built in ideal conditions, they have a very large plot of land on which to build. The brunt of the stores would be arranged along a few long corridors (or “MileAisles” as Petroski calls them) that often intersect at oblique angles, with anchor stores and entrances at the end of each hall. (The Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener, Ontario is a paragon of this organizational strategy.) So while shoppers are not forced to walk the entire length of the corridor, the organization of the space statistically engenders this type of movement. The anchor stores are the most likely places for shoppers to spend money, and if a shopper plans to visit two or more anchor stores, they have to traverse the length of the mall in order to do so (similar to the milk being placed at the far end of the grocery store).

While grocery stores categorize their contents thematically, malls like this tend to be intentionally less organized. Grocery stores, like department stores function like three-dimensional encyclopedias, whereas in malls stores of a particular type are not grouped together in the space (other than the food court). The only way of finding them is either by memory or by using the maps provided at particular points in the mall, producing much backtracking and wandering on the part of shoppers. For prime shopping conditions, malls combine this labyrinthine planned-disorganization and the MileAisle strategy with the Gruen Transfer – a moment of slack-jawed bewilderment caused by the plethora of goods presented in malls that renders a destination-shopper (someone with a particular product in mind) an impulse-shopper.

However, when malls are confined to much smaller plots of land in downtowns, how do designers combine these techniques with an economy of scale?

“Securing a mile-long but narrow plot of land might be among the greatest challenges to entrepreneurs wishing to establish a MileAisle in a developed area. The single-aisle concept could still be accomplished by a reconfiguration of the design. […] It could be constructed as a helix, with the shoppers taking an elevator up to the top and walking down, much as museum-goers do in New York’s Guggenheim. If local building codes did not allow a tall enough structure, the aisle might be designed as a double helix, with shoppers walking up one strand and down the other, thus also providing a more rigorous exercise regimen” (Petroski, 83).

Tongue-in-cheek aside, this helix model is the driving principle behind the flow of Kitchener’s Market Square, a downtown mall. It functions almost exactly the same as Fairview Park Mall’s long corridors, except the MileAisles are coiled into creative patterns. In the central area of the main floor, there are two paths that circulate a central aperture, which divides the two ‘aisles’ but also allows for shoppers to see across. A lobby and a small branch of hallways sprout off the central area, the latter following a more standard mall layout (straight hallways with shops on either side). The second floor is an even more simplified structure. The central path coils outward from the mall’s only escalator in an S-shape, following the curve of the aperture on one side and a bank of fast food counters on the other, before opening up into a windowed seating area and a large storefront. At the time the mall was built, these serpentine paths were intermittently interrupted by entrances into the mall’s only anchor store, Eaton’s. This anchor also had an escalator system inside, elaborating the mall’s flow – more like two interlocked figure eights.

What could these organizational principles be used for other than retail?

Works Cited:

Petroski, Henry. “Labyrinthine Design.” Small things considered: why there is no perfect design. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 80-98.