Study On Spatial Configuration Of Shopping Mall's Public Space By Space Syntax

As shopping mall get more and more popular, the subject matter of "spatial configuration of shopping mall's public space and consumer behavior"has a important significance. The difficulty of keeping a balance between the creative and expressive design of the architectural form and the internal functionality and operational convenience has always been on the minds of architects and their design associates. Shopping mall is a special type of architecture in its own right. It has a special function and unique spatial requirements, which come with is, to promote growth of consumer behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to clarity the generic function of the spatial configuration of shopping mall's public space, in order to avoid some malfunction issue, such as being unable to generate pedestrian movement, consequently to reduce business benefit of shopping mall. We focus our study on shopping mall built in recent times. We rely heavily on the methodology of Space Syntax Analysis, developed by Bill Hillier, for our investigation and analysis in trying to understand the inherent organizing logic of the modern shopping mall's spatial configuration. We also used the software associated with this methodology extensively for a quantitative analysis. We intend to uncover characteristics of the deep structure embedded in the surface layout of a shopping mall. We coupled this analysis with our field study on visitor behavior in order to verify the rationality of the architectural spatial configuration of a shopping mall. We would like to offer our findings to people working in the field of designing shopping mall. Our preliminary findings have shown that the spatial configuration of a shopping mall influences consumer behavior in a fundamental way. After the space syntax analysis on shopping mall's public space, we find that if public space were not well thought out beforehand, it would hinder pedestrian movement dramatically. This has been supported by our field study on consumer behavior patterns. We also find out that the high complexity of the spatial configuration of a shopping mall often causes many consumer to have a feeling of being lost inside it. In order to provide the consumer with a well connected and intelligible spatial system of a shopping mall, it would be necessary to get a simply and legible spatial configuration, as consumer could move around the shopping mall more efficiently and smoothly in a rather natural way.