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A PR IL 2016 | 69 Square One Shopping Centre (South Expansion) RENDERING/+ PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES SHAY/COURTESY OXFORD PROPERTIES GROUP Square One Shopping Centre (South Expansion) by MARTHA UNIACKE BREEN L arge shopping malls are such a familiar part of the urban fabric nowadays that it's hard to conceive that they really only became popular about 40 years ago. The main appeal of the large mall was the idea of being able to visit all your favourite stores under one roof, freed from blustery winter winds or summer heat. Everything about the design back then was cocooning: few or no windows, intimately low ceilings and sometimes stylistically unified signage. On the outside, in an architectural style that actually gained its own name – Shopping Mall Brutalism – the cocoon metaphor was complete: generally, blank, monolithic concrete walls unsullied by any form of decoration, leading reverently and inexorably to a temple-like front entrance. Pretty much every mega-mall worth its real estate has left that idea behind now. And one of the most interesting examples of how mall architecture has come of age is illustrated in the recent revitalization of Mississauga's Square One Shopping Centre. Square One has just completed the final, and by far the largest, of a three- part renovation that began in 2013, with an $84-million renovation that refreshed and renovated the then main part of the shopping centre, expanded and upscaled the food court, and added new flooring. The second phase, completed in 2014 to the tune of $62 million, expanded the north side of the mall, with high-profile new tenants such as Ontario's largest Forever 21 and the fashion-forward Brandy Melville. But the $320-million, 200,000-square- foot-plus South Expansion that opened on March 1 dwarfs the previous changes. Giant new retailers such as a flagship Holt Renfrew, the first Simons in Ontario, and some 75,000 square feet of other aspirational brand name stores, will be linked to a dramatic 60-foot-high central glass rotunda. The rotunda directly addresses one of the central downtown streets of the city, and according to the project's principal architect, Christopher Brown of MMC Architects, is destined to become a local beacon; "an iconic structure for Mississauga." The land surrounding Square One has changed more radically than most plazas of similar vintage (it first opened in 1973), from a windswept open field to the centrepiece of a rapidly expanding city. Both the City of Mississauga and Oxford Properties Group, Square One's owners, knew the mall's reinvention would have to be about much more than just making great shopping better. "Square One has become part of a very urban environment, and there's a longing on the part of the City to create more of a streetscape," says Brown. In fact, city planners worked very closely with the developers and architects to make the most of the mall's high-profile position and design. "And one of the most important aspects of the mall design, the glass entrance, is designed to make the building visually permeable – you can see right into the depth of the building from the outside, which on the inside you can see the high rises and the city outside, and people walking by." Inside, the general tenor is designed to emulate a town's high street, Brown continues. Wide corridors, high ceilings, long vistas and an abundance of glass and natural daylight enhance that feeling. Stores are encouraged to express their individuality, and part of the first renovation raised the ceiling in existing stores to add to their presence. John Hillier of DTAH, who designed the exterior and grounds, explains that the landscape design was guided by the same urban-vitality principle that shaped the interior: "That includes stone sidewalks and places to walk, with planters, benches, street lighting and urban furniture. We drew on urban parks like Cumberland Park in Yorkville for inspiration; the idea of café seating on gravel, where you look up through tree branches to the sky above. The public spaces include seating under the trees, trellises, a playground for children and a programmed fountain to encourage people to sit and enjoy themselves. We were really creating the idea of a city downtown; it wasn't what you would normally expect in a mall." Square One general manager Greg Taylor explains that from a business point of view, the impetus behind the renovation of not just Square One, but large-scale malls all across North America, has been driven in part by the larger demographic shift in department stores and other large- scale establishments. "There have been a lot of changes in anchor tenants, some of which had been in place for as long as 35 or 40 years," he says, adding, "but they've been replaced by great new anchors. So the mall is changing from a customer point of view." Steven Scuro of the New York architectural firm Janson Goldstein LLP, who along with Mark Janson were the partners in charge of the Holt Renfrew project, says, "We were given the opportunity to conceive the building from the ground up, which is a very rare opportunity for a specialty department store. Designing the store from the inside out meant we were able to create dramatic areas which have 27-foot ceilings, often adjacent to the glass facade. The store anchors the corner of the newly expanded mall and our entry points intersect with main traffic and view corridors within the mall." Creating a "town within a town" is an enormously complicated undertaking technically, especially when a large part of it involved modernizing a structure that was originally built 40 years earlier. Matt Richardson of EllisDon Construction, the general contractor on the expansion, recalls just one of the elaborate workarounds his team was involved in: inverting the trusses to raise the sloped roof of the existing Gap court. "The sloped roof was supported by trusses that were exposed to view," he explains. "We were asked to invert the trusses so that the steel frame could be supported from above. As this area was too far away from the three cranes that we had installed for the base building construction and too far away from the road for a mobile crane, our superintendent Manny Bairos implemented a radical idea to install a crane through the mall. "So we cut a hole in the slab to pour the crane base and a hole through the roof, then erected a crane that extended above the roof to install the new steel. The crane was visible to mall patrons as we flipped the steel overhead, while keeping the mall open the entire time." Lighting was another very important part of enhancing the transparency and vitality of the streetscape to encourage visual interaction between the interior and the exterior. Brown explains, "Malls are huge consumers of energy, especially in summer. So we developed daylight harvesting. The lighting is 100 per cent LEDs, but the system automatically detects the level of daylight and dims the interior lighting accordingly, reducing the energy load." The cool operating temperature of LED helps to reduce AC loads as well, for a total energy ratio of one to 12 compared to the older systems. "I'm particularly proud of this aspect of the building," Brown says. "But I also love the sense of place here. You stand in the court and see the city all around you and really feel you've arrived. As an architect, I love the idea that people will come and enjoy the space, and really sense the importance of architecture in place making." A LOCATION 100 City Centre Dr, Mississauga, Ontario OWNER/DEVELOPER Square One Shopping Centre / Oxford Properties Group ARCHITECTS MMC Architects IBI Group Architects (Holt Renfrew) GENERAL CONTRACTORS EllisDon Construction Govan Brown (interior – Holt Renfrew) STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. MECHANICAL CONSULTANT TMP Toronto ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT Hammerschlag & Joffe Inc. SITE/CIVIL CONSULTANT RK Burnside LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT DTAH INTERIOR DESIGNER Janson Goldstein LLP (Holt Renfrew) TOTAL SIZE 200,000+ square feet TOTAL COST $320 million 3:54 PM 1:51 PM

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