Peek & Cloppenburg Store, Vienna Austria by David Chipperfield Architects.

Keeping with the commercial theme for today, I thought it would be interesting to compare my earlier post, the Amasçati, retail complex in Turkey by Tabanlioğlu Architects, with the Peek & Cloppenburg flagship store in Vienna by David Chipperfield. They are not a like for like comparison as Tabanlioğlu's project is an edge of town development, Chipperfield's a city centre building. But the comparison does highlight the different responses necessary by virtue of the context. In the city centre project the street is the meeting place. The building occupies a frontage, and if the retail offering is to be successful it must siphon people from the street into the building. A similar situation arises in a mall where, accepting the anchor stores, it is passing trade that is all important. In the edge of town complex, there is no real passing trade, if one excludes zooming past on a highway. The shopping centre is the destination. In this situation, providing a convivial environment in addition to the retail offering keeps customers there longer and encourages them to think of the total environment as an entity, a country club perhaps, to which they travel for a break, something like an afternoon off.