Shopping as a Theatrical Experience
One of the joys of sprawling South Coast Plaza, just off the San Diego Freeway in Costa Mesa, is getting lost there window shopping.
Most shopping malls are marked by a homogenized interior design that makes wandering their corridors and riding their escalators predictable and ultimately, boring.
Not so South Coast Plaza, which since rising out of an Orange County lima bean field about 20 years ago, has grown in well-planned stages to become one of the most diverting retail centers in the world.
With about 300 shops, 30 restaurants and food stands and eight major department stores, the plaza, in effect has become an engaging, well-scrubbed bazaar in the tradition of the city as a market place--and the place to be.
“ ‘Shopping’ has become more than just shopping,” according to Maura Eggan, the plaza’s director of marketing. “It is now a theatrical experience and the retail center a place to meet or go with a friend and have something to eat, as well as to shop. It is what ‘going downtown,’ or ‘going to the city’ used to be all about.”
Strolling through the plaza’s malls is in many ways like strolling along the select retail streets of a wealthy city, albeit in a climate-controlled environment without dirt, noise and traffic.
But that environment also can become numbing and disorienting. To overcome that problem, the plaza has encouraged and orchestrated an imaginative landscaping, architecture and interior design program that invites touring even if you’re not in a buying mood, and has made South Coast Plaza a model for other malls.
The plaza is focused on three courts: the Carousel Court, featuring--to the delight of children of all ages--a carrousel; the Jewel Court with its stained glass dome; and the Crystal Court, centered on a classical rotunda bathed in natural light during the day and theatrical lighting at night.
Open late last year, the Crystal Court is particularly handsome and well detailed--from its red marble and tile floors, accented by travertine and strips of polished brass, to its barrel vaulted skylights. It was designed by Architects Pacifica Ltd.
To make the malls sprouting off of the courts seem smaller and more intimate, the tiering of each level as you go up is set farther and farther back. Facades are varied by allowing store fronts to “pop out.”
There are convenient bridges connecting the levels, a surfeit of plantings and welcome benches and low walls to sit on while watching the world go by.
Further aiding the ambiance is restaurant seating spilling out onto the malls via open cafes, all of which reminds one of the more successful pedestrian streets of Europe.
But most interesting to me are the designs of many of the individual stores. In their diversity they lend South Coast Plaza a pluralistic charm that makes browsing there a delight.
With its facade of faux drapes of marble and its interior of rich classical forms, the Jessica McClintock women’s clothing store on the second level of the Crystal Court exudes chic. It is no wonder that the design by Gensler & Associates recently was honored by the Orange County chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
In the same vein but in a softer, more sensual tone is Susan Marie’s women’s clothing store, designed by Media 5, on the second level near the Jewel Court. On the same level overlooking the Carousel Court is Charlotte Russe, a den of dazzle detailed with neon that made me blink twice; once at the design and once at the prices.
More perky and pop is the MGA clothing store, and more appropriately subdued is the Daniel Cremieux outlet, both on the first level of the Crystal Court and both designed by architect Thane Roberts.
On the third level of the Crystal Court is the North Face, a spare sporting goods store worth a look, if only for the use of stone in its facade. It was designed by Horvath Associates. A busy Banana Republic or a discriminate Ralph Lauren Shop (both on the first level between the Carousel and Jewel courts), it is not.
For more contrasts, on the second level between the Jewel and Carousel courts there is a neo-classical David Orgell’s, designed by Johannes Van Tilburg, across from a classical Rizzoli’s bookstore (with its newsstand of foreign periodicals), designed by Synthesis, Inc.
Also on the second level by the Jewel Court is a little piece of the fashionable southwest in the Golden Bough, designed by John Midyette III & Associates. And on the first level near the Carousel Court is a touch of Art Deco Paris in the Pace Setter Pavilion, designed by Robert Benson, with an assist from Joe Musil and John Schinnerer.
The stores and their designs add up to a very cosmopolitan, if eclectic experience; an experience that does not dissipate until one has to edge one’s way out of the parking lot, onto the freeway and home.
