Market brilliance

Market brilliance
A bold aesthetic makes The Landmark's market and food court a compelling destination in Manila, Philippines

By Gareth Fenley, Contributor
April 01, 2008

Toto Labrador, 2nd Storey Studios, Quezon City, Philippines

Grocery shopping customs in Asia are different from what's commonly found in the West. Asians shop more frequently—often as a family—and have more choices than shoppers in countries limited to chain stores. On the other side of the world, architect Hugh A. Boyd, FAIA, who practices from a small office in Montclair, N.J., has created a substantial reputation by designing public markets, which may seem fresh and nostalgic in the United States.

When Boyd received a design commission for a supermarket in Manila, Philippines, it was no surprise to him that his client wanted the result to look sleekly modern, rather than its rustic counterparts. "They have hundreds of basic, raw markets where people are shopping every day," Boyd says. "For a supermarket to distinguish itself, they want to go the other extreme. They want to go to the new hygiene, the cleanliness, the refrigeration."

Electricity costs in the Philippines are among the highest in the world, and many citizens there do not have refrigerators at home. They typically buy meat and produce every day or two, whereas Americans might shop once a week. In the Philippines and throughout Asia, major department stores draw traffic with supermarkets and adjoining food courts on the lowest level.

The Landmark, Manila's most venerable department store, fits that pattern in its 30-year-old, four-level hypermart in a downtown mall managed by Ayala, a leading name in Filipino retail. When Ayala began to develop a new mall in Quezon City at the terminus of Manila's main rapid transit line, Landmark signed up to be the primary anchor. Landmark's president, Elizabeth M. Cheng, wanted a world-class food level for the location. While reviewing architectural books, she spotted a market Boyd designed for New York's Grand Central Station. Cheng became the driving force in selecting Boyd to come up with a fun, spacious store concept that would visually entertain and accommodate a huge volume of shoppers.

The new Landmark store was slated for five levels of a building rising above a transit authority maintenance facility. The station at TrinoMa (triangle north of Manila) handles 80,000 commuters per day. Two adjacent major roadways are heavily plied by public utility vehicles, and the densely populated area surrounding TrinoMa includes dozens of exclusive upper- and middle-class subdivisions. All of these sources of potential customers were expected to deliver a high percentage of family-sized groups. "Filipino families love to do things together," explains Brigitte Chan, Landmark's vice president for finance. "They try to find activities and locations to go to, whereby they can bond with each other."

Cheng and her leadership team wanted the new supermarket and food court to be exciting, easy to shop, and big—very big. The 94,000-sq.-ft. supermarket would carry upwards of 30,000 SKUs, in addition to the 51,000-sq.-ft. food court. Boyd sized up prospects by touring the downtown Landmark store and its competitors in metro Manila. "I felt all departments could be increased in size," he says.

Plenty of floor space was available for Boyd to work with at TrinoMa, but an existing structure gave him a handicapped start. The concrete footprint of the building shell had already been constructed several years before and never finished. The floor plate was broken by a disruptive grid of square, 5-ft.-by-5-ft. concrete columns. Ceiling heights averaged only 11 ft. due to the massive structure supporting six levels above (four retail floors for The Landmark topped by two floors for offices and employee facilities).

Additionally, Boyd was severely limited in the use of wood as a material to humanize the concrete cavern. "Due to heavy deforestation in the Philippines over the last 50 years, the use of wood is highly restricted and extremely expensive," he explains. "Our response to this challenge was to base the majority of the design upon inexpensive painted gypsum board, fiberglass-reinforced gypsum shapes and a locally produced solid-surface acrylic material similar to Corian." The low cost of these materials, along with the low cost of local labor, allowed the designers to stay within budget.

Customers can access the supermarket and food court from three direct street-level entrances, elevators from the adjacent parking building and the department store, and mall-level access via the inner lobby of the department store. Curves dominate the most prominent interior surfaces. Near the two entrances, oval pods conceal storage for 900 shopping carts. To help create a sense of spaciousness, a series of light-colored, floating, rounded shapes are suspended below the exposed ceiling structure, which is painted in dark colors.

Landmark's supermarket shoppers begin in the produce section, where Boyd's team created a "blow-away presentation," with curving surfaces playing against the fresh fruit and vegetable shapes. Large columns faced in glass tile are wrapped by circular displays of produce. Major specialty departments, with the exception of the wine department, are located along the perimeter, facilitating easy access to their prep rooms, coolers and loading dock. The wines are displayed in a jewel-like, glass-enclosed island.

Abutting the supermarket is the large food court (the "Food Center") with 34 vendors, from mega-chains like McDonald's to local Filipino businesses. The food court has a seating capacity of 1,300. Here, the department store dictated the corner location of the escalators that connect up to the shopping floors above and the mall beyond.

Early in the construction of the department store, a series of structural columns in the food court area had to be reinforced with large, low-hanging armatures. This made the subterranean area even more challenging. "Most food courts in the States are usually built at grade where it's one big, wide-open hall, with very few columns," Boyd says. "But here, we're in a basement—there's no natural light. Huge, massive columns are breaking up the view lines. So, we wrapped the columns with beautiful, decorative, bowl-shaped objects. Once we set that up, it created a curve to take off the edges of the columns, then started to dictate that all the counters and railings and seating areas would start playing on these serpentine curves and oval shapes." Railings that separate seating from circulation are constructed from 1-in.-thick solid-surface acrylic with oval cutouts that were hand-routed in the field.

Graphic design for the project was executed by Leslie Evans of Leslie Evans Design, Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Susan Roberts of Athens, Ga., joined the team to work on the architectural color palette and murals for the food court's bowl shapes and walls. The mural designs were hand-painted by the store chain's advertising artists from detailed maquettes by Roberts. These decorative tropical patterns wrap around the 12-ft.-high bowl shapes to bring color and light to the basement location. Mural imagery interprets local flowers, mangos, nuts, pineapples and palms.

Energy-efficient lighting systems were mandatory, due to local electric costs. The team led by lighting designer Al Borden of Philadelphia-based The Lighting Practice followed the strategy of brightly lighting vertical surfaces and critical displays using metal halide and fluorescent sources. General footcandle levels were kept contrastingly low, allowing specialty departments in the supermarket and vendors in the food court to shine.

The design team created a cohesive color environment for the project, with specifications for columns, soffits, glass tiles, grout, counters, check-out systems, chairs, signage, uniforms and shopping baskets. Even multinational giants with locations in the food court follow the aesthetic scheme. "In Asia, you can dictate more how things look," Boyd says. "There's a very small window allowing each vendor to do its own individual design work. The result is more consistency, and an incredibly powerful design."

WEB EXTRA! One-on-one with the designer: Hugh A. Boyd, FAIA, Hugh A. Boyd Architect, Montclair, N.J.

Q: How did you get started in the design profession?
A: I always have loved to travel and was very fortunate to have a family that placed great emphasis on this during my childhood. I then chose the University of Notre Dame because they sent their third year architectural students to Rome to study for a year.

Q: What challenges will retailers face in the coming five to 10 years?
A: Globalization is having a great impact upon retail and it is becoming more difficult to distinguish individual retailers and their unique messages.

Q: Where do you see the retail design industry five years from now?
A: I don't believe that in the next five years there will be a significant change from where we are today. I think that greater changes are coming in the next 10 years. With technology exploding, it's difficult to predict how traditional retail spaces will respond
and accommodate.

Q: How do you keep your staff motivated? Is it challenging to incite inspiration?
A: As a one-man firm it's not difficult to keep myself motivated! I love what I do.

Q: What are your first steps in conceptualizing a new project design?
A: Typically I do a great amount of research on the individual retailer, trying to understand their aspirations and unique product lines. I also get inspiration from visiting art museums and traveling.

Q: What retail retail project would you most love to get your hands on as a designer?
A: I would love to do a food hall/specialty grocer in Europe.

Q: What is your favorite design project of all you've worked on?
A: The project that I'm working on at present. Every new project gives you the opportunity to push your imagination further.

Q: Because of your profession, do you have trouble differentiating yourself as a customer or designer when in a store?
A: Not really. I think, as designers, you're creating something to meet your own expectations, your likes and dislikes as a customer, but it's interesting to see other people's concepts.

Q: Who are your role models/mentors in the design field?
A: I was very fortunate to have a truly inspirational professor at Notre Dame named Patrick Horsbrugh. We spent many hours discussing, not only design, but design in a global and environmental sense. This was over 30 years ago so, in many ways, he was very ahead of his time. I try to apply the global sense of caring in all my work.

Q: What three words would you use to describe your design philosophy?
A: Simplicity, color, movement.