Commercial community: a better big box

Abstract

This Master's Degree Project examines the condition of the large-scale retail environment and its potential to net positive contribution to the public realm of the city. It challenges the notion of the "big-box" within its current context to provide more than a one-dimensional shopping experience, and become of succinct part of the urban experience. This design exploration, through analysis and synthesis, proposes a recalibration of the existing commercial components in order to create a diverse commercially based community that merges the pedestrian within an auto-centric culture. Through this recalibration of the key components that comprise the existing large­scale shopping environment - parking, scale, access - and those that provide a more human experience of public space - diversity, engagement, activity - a new application of the existing shopping typology is created; one of social and economic intensity.