KOOZ What prompted the project?

YG The project began right at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and ironically it was my own experiences with overconsumption. Cooped up in our homes, alienated from our surroundings, our only source of interactions and information was through the media channels. By overconsumption, I don’t only refer to the consumption of materialistic objects but also the plethora of information that we feed our minds with. The project began with a concern in this idea of consumption in society. The control that the consumerist image has on us and the consequences that it has. The project is only a question and an attempt to materialize the infrastructure that lies on the other side of the capitalist image. A spatial response to the aftermath of our consumerist lifestyles.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?

YG The project provokes several questions throughout the entire process. Most of which always have a thread connected to this question of – ‘What happens to the mall post-consumption?’ The ‘aftermath’ of it all – tangible and intangible. The colossal amounts of waste generated and the infrastructure that runs the advertisements before every piece of information consumed. It addresses the use value of the structure of a dead mall today and not only the future possibilities but also the consequences of this progress. The project consolidates and weaves all of these complex facets revealing a sort of an invisibilized reality, a creation of our own.

KOOZ What texts and references informed the project and your stance?

YG The thesis project began with a lot of readings from books and excerpts like Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre, Margaret Crawford’s A World in a Shopping Mall, Guy Debord’s A Society of the Spectacle and Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin and some notable contemporary readings like Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Liam Young & Edward Snowden’s work. All of these works have directly or indirectly impacted the theorising, strategizing and making of the project. At a glance the project may seem to take a moralistic or even an anarchic stance, which I agree it is in certain aspects. However, the thesis’s underlying comment is for a hopeful future that wishes to address this neglect and make an attempt to accept and answer these questions. The project is merely a splinter in time, a mutant that changes and evolves with society. It attempts to create architecture that holds a mirror to our civilization: today it aspires to become infrastructure for the city but tomorrow it may become something else altogether, depending on how we consume.

KOOZ How does the project understand the future role of the mall within our society?

YG It’s a tight rope to walk on when one talks about a large brick and mortar retail space like a mall in today’s time. The first part of the thesis included an in-depth study on the history of commodification and how retail has evolved into a huge spectrum tangled within our everyday lives. The mall was envisaged as a hyper-stylized imagination of modernity, a go-to space of performance of one’s identity. Over time though as technology evolved, one didn’t need to be present physically to purchase commodities. Which did put a dent in the footfall of the mall, as the mall in itself runs high on capital as compared to e-commerce, if not more. However, it is not just that as there are several reasons from social, economical to design that caused its death. The one particular existing case chosen for the intervention has been dead for a long period despite being in a prime location, which is mainly due to a failure in its spatial and economical design. Having said that, the mall in its conventional sense wouldn’t be feasible in the future or even today. The project however isn’t really an imagination for the future of the mall but rather it is a critical comment on the way things are or may turn out to be. The mall cannot be resurrected to the way it used to be or should be, as the built form is in itself unsuitable. But in the future, I do believe it is possible for the mall to exist in society but it would need to be designed economically as an add-on to our surroundings rather than a standalone enclosed glass-box that it is today.

KOOZ How do the recycling facility and data centre co-exist in the mall? What is the added value of merging these two activities within the space of the "dead" mall?

YG The choice of the programs were derived from the hypothesis of deconstructing the commodity and realising its aftermath. Although, both the programs don’t necessarily interact with each other directly, the allocation for each program aids to its own functioning; for it to co-exist in the same building. While designing, the biggest challenge was how can the building function efficiently like a machine? And how can the machine then open out and interact with people? The space of the dead mall is revived as a resourceful assemblage functioning within the city, still serving the same purpose at a macro level. By coming together, these two programs celebrate the death of the mall with a subversion of a parallel reality that materialises the dematerialised ideas that the mall is built on.

KOOZ Within the era of the metaverse, how does the project approach the role of the architect?

YG At this point of time, we’ve come to see an ample amount of criticism against this expansion of the virtual/digital realm in all aspects of our lives. But come to think of it, civilization has come so far with this technology and I think we’re too early in the process to deem it to be something that is morally right or wrong. Especially with the pandemic, we certainly seem to have inherited this mode of interaction and I think it’s here to stay. The project too acknowledges this neo-consumerist lifestyle and breathes the same space of the mall with the data center, serving a purpose at a macro scale. For this project especially, to design this infrastructure in a mall was to perform as a cog in the machine whilst opening out different trajectories. As an architect, the project demanded approaches beyond just formal ideas but also understanding the semantics and the logic of a recycling facility and the data center which then dictated much of the formal elements in the project. The project approached retail and its experience at a larger scale, bridging this metaverse in a digital – physical blend. Where the mall isn’t revived in its conventional ways but rather lets the consumerist infrastructure take precedence.

KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?

YG Architectural imagery is really a double-edged sword. It holds an immense amount of power to influence and sometimes even deceive. But I think there’s fun in abstractions and convolutions too. However, an architectural drawing as opposed to an image of a building, (as Corbusier said) – leaves less room for lies as it squeezes out the details from every corner of a space. For me, the drawing as a tool materialises ideas on paper, it helps elicit atmospheres and the joy of a space. Not just for this project but all things design, I begin with the process hands-on, pencil on paper. The freedom of the hand becomes a method to investigate and experiment with several different ideas. The tools which come later that cut, draw, fill, extrude, splice do help, but the process I believe begins with an imagination first.