The owners of the Emporia complex in the Swedish city of Malmö wanted to attract more and more shoppers. Above all, they wanted a striking design that would turn heads, and so they entrusted the project to the architecture office of Gert Wingårdh. Emporia stands close to a railway station, and its owners have their eye on the people who use it!
The Swedish studio made the owners’ vision a reality in the most striking way, exploiting the brilliance and plasticity of glass. A three-storey shopping centre, with a total area of 2,589 sq.m, houses a supermarket, offices and apartments in colourful spaces wrapped in a spiralling glass structure that reflects the sun and the lights of the city.
Working with the construction company Crícursa, each pane was formed by placing pieces of glass in moulds and heating them to 540°C, allowing the glass to take the required shape. Once the final shape had been checked, blue and amber plastic films were applied, and finally each piece was fixed into aluminium frames.
The glass shell is the easiest part of Emporia to decipher structurally, but Wingårdh and his team did not stop there. For the interior, they applied the practice of avoiding an intermediate scale. This means that their construction proposals are defined by being either large or small, and never by anything “in between”, anywhere from one centimetre to one metre.
Visitors may be impressed by something or simply pay it no attention, with each of these two options serving specific purposes.
The variety of colour is another key element of Emporia. It is an aesthetic statement that also delivers the functionality a space this large demands. Each part of the centre is defined by a particular shade, helping visitors find their way around.
Architecture Office: www.wingardhs.se
Text – Editing: Ioanna Pavlopoulou
