Cloudland Shopping Complex
2015 PCBC Gold Nugget Award of Merit Winner
City of Beijing, China
Near Capital International Airport, Cloudland Shopping complex is designed to become Beijing’s latest, greatest, and most inclusive of work, play and shopping experience. This 190,000 square meter (2,050,000 square feet) destination mall intends to define the luxury shopping experience for this capital city by integrating its unparalleled design with all inclusive activities as well as upscale amenities. The LCW group was commissioned to design four levels of exterior retails space to integrate the luxury and upscale feel of the shopping complex.
The Cloudland Shopping Complex represents an advancement of the healthy community concept in China. The entire shopping center is an outdoor mall and only major stores, the supermarket and movie theater have direct access from the parking garage. It may seem common and normal in California, but it’s a very risky and ambition plan for Beijing. Due to extreme weather conditions, August temperatures can exceed 104 F and January can dip to -4 F. Therefore, people in Beijing are not use to the concept of a modern, open air shopping mall that requires them to walk outside and get some exercise in the ocess.
Both architecture and landscape design are carrying forward the healthy community mission by inviting shoppers to tour all the shops by foot via outdoor routes. By providing attractive building elevations, outdoor amenities and placing flagship stores on major nodes of outdoor circulation. Lots of fun and surprise elements are added into our designs. These elements include consistently changing building elevations, paving patterns that give shopper the hint of more interesting spaces to explore, hidden water features that surprise shoppers with water vapor, and dancing water jet streams that are fun attractions on a hot summer day, oversize screen wall plays free program, Seating areas with oversized planter pots shelter shoppers from cold breezes in winter, and multiple gathering spaces allow the mall management to host multiple outdoor events at the same time to attract different groups of people.