What Makes For A Well Designed Mall?

Eh... well seeing as my last thread seemed drama-infested, let's try this: What exactly makes a well designed mall? I mean, is it the large open spaces? is it the ability to efficiently accomodate as many vendors as possible?

I think the Rainbow Tiger mall is a FANTASTIC mall design. It's spacious and virtually every vendor spot is visible to the outside. Not to mention the first floor has a common area for socialization. In all it's a very well balanced mall. But that's just my own opinion, what's your opinion on what makes a kickass mall?

Check out the Larsen Shops - I think they are the perfect example of a well laid out, accessible shopping center. The wide open spaces, small shop feel, and just general ambience are all fantastic elements. I have also always been very fond of the Beverly Hills sim - not sure if it is still around.

The best mall is no mall at all. Death to capitalist pigs. (Seriously. Death.)

~Ulrika~

Come now, Ulrika, you're not even trying.

Once more. With feeling!

Serpent Isle is a great place to shop . Teleports to any shop from sim entry point. Nice atmosphere, great looking shops.

I refuse to die!

Make the mall easily accessible, compliment wide open spaces, and make the products easy to display and browse for.

Since there seems to be wide public opinion about how a good mall is designed...I'd like to invite feedback on the mall at Poecila 203, 141. NOTE: I'm not adverstising, would like honest feedback please. Thank You

I really like the middle arcade you have going; makes it nice and inviting what with the fountains and trees.


As for the mall itself, the wide windows make for easy browsing (if the vendors set it up as such), but the tint could be an issue. Also, the entrances look just like windows, making it sort of non-intuitive as to how you get into a store.

Adding some architectural flair on the buildings themselves (arches, crossbeams, whatever) would go a long way too.

If the mall is a multi-level mall,it should be easy to fly from one floor to the next. In many malls, every floor is the exactly the same size. This makes flying up from one floor to next sometimes annoying when you hit your head on the ledge above you. Or when flying down, you miss the floor below and have to then fly back up. Or the ledges outsides the shops, are too narrow and easy to miss.

Ditto Cris' Larsen Shops comments. An immersive atmosphere, provided by quality building techniques, and incoorporating a few shops that host equally attractive, reasonably priced, merchandise is the best design for a "mall."

I don't like malls either!

Why have a mall, when one can enjoy the bliss of internet catalog shopping?

http://www.ulrikasheim.org/catalog/

Ah, the infinite joy of electrons pushed by nuclear energy and fossil fuels... embrace your dark side, all of you...

*boo hiss* down with malls!!

Briana Dawson

Get rid of single image vendors like Hiro's for scrolling for now...ugh..takes forever to see the next item. I like a big store with a separate prim for each article. It's just easier to browse that way. The multiple image vendors seem to do ok as well. I won't spend the extra time needed for the textures to load on the single prim, I'll just go to another shop.

Other than that, I agree with all of the above comments.

Noel, nice forum avatar.

*snickers*

Quality Products and an atmoshphere to the mall.. not just tossed up prims horribly textured

Seconded

I like to see merchandise on display. I like to see how big an object is compared to me, to be able to examine quality. For example, how well textures are adapted to each of the prims. Does the root make sense or is it some oddly rotated object, like a pillow on a bed, that will make placement forever a hassle.

I've been to places with row after row of vendors, stacked vertically who knows how high. It becomes an exercise in camera control to look at them. Its a lot of textures to load at once. Its hard to gather at a glance what sort of organization there might be -- do I have to look at /everything/ to see what is here? Those places I leave right away. Dont enter if I see from the outside that its a huge patchwork of vendors I can't see by standing in front of them.

If its something that can't be put on display, like clothes (although there are ways around that, too -- I remember someone who had racks with their cloths hanging on them like an actual brick & mortar store) then vendors with a reasonable number of related selections works best for me.

Finally, I also am hopeful that P2P will mean that merchants can focus on one or two locations that are really well done, instead of feeling it necessary to have a presence in every avie trap, err, I mean mall, on the planet.

Focusing rent and prims in a few locations, with thoughtful and considered layouts, continually managed and updated, seems to me to offer the best to everyone, merchant and shopper alike.

@ Lizbeth Marlowe

im the exact oppsite i HATE walking into a store and seeing 500 blurry pictures of crap i dont care about (im not a big dress wearer for example) wait 20 min just to finally see that the pants i wanted to look at are not my style

course thats from a male av's prespective ... becuase every store that has male clothing has like 3 prims of it and many many prims of cute dresses and tubetop shirts

I went to see the Larson mall because of this thread. It's really great. Landmarked for shopping day.

OMFG this is so damn true! 0-0-0 should put whatever you're trying to move in a perfectly flat upright position ... Buuuuuuuuuttt NNnnnooooooooooooooo, so often the root is some skewed piece of whatever that should you accidently rotate it wrong, it will NEVER EVER rest flat on the ground again.

I hate malls where you can never find what you want. Usually I find the mall when I do a search for one particular thing, then I actually go there and they no longer sell it because the particular store moved/closed. I only figure that out after walking through the place twice or thrice.

Much easier to visit a single store, which at least is up to date on advertising.