Annie Goldsmith

Annie Goldsmith

The Copley Place and Prudential Center malls and Newbury Street display a stark contrast in the different modes one can organize a retail center or area. First, Newbury is very open, with stores in townhouse style buildings along the street. I think the organization is interesting in its usage of space. As I show in my sketch, the entrances to the stores tend to alternate between having to go upstairs and downstairs. This maximizes the amount of land used, while still giving each shop an individual storefront. Additionally, the street is made more pleasant by the cohesiveness of the brick buildings and the trees planted orderly along the large sidewalk. The attractiveness of the street makes people want to spend more time in the area which leads to them shopping more.

In contrast, the two malls are much more enclosed than Newbury Street. They go up several stories and have few windows. The bridge connecting the two malls allows shoppers to stay completely isolated from the outside world, while Newbury street is very much immersed in the city. Newbury is very “old Boston” while the malls are quite modern. In my sketch, I depicted an aerial view from the top of Copley Place. I thought the shape of the space was an interesting polygon. I also noticed the many different paths of shoppers but I could not really see the actual stores from that angle. I made my sketch a lot about the motion of the shopping rather than the specific stores.