AS: As an excuse…

TN: Which is quite wrong from outside.

RK: I wanted to say that but you said that (Thibault). At the same time, I disagree with the point that you say (Thibault) that it is a box that is trying to sell something. Frankly, none of us are quali- fied enough to decide the retail miix, the retail method or the climate of retail that has to appear in certain zones. If architects think that they can do it, they are bullshitting. We have done a cou- ple of malls, and after sometime I just step back. Whether the developer is right or wrong is anoth- er subjective equation. There is a whole science…

VS: It is like a hospital with its own rules…

TN: Sorry to interrupt, but when I say that it is a box with commercial activity, it is not to question the design, to me having public spaces in this box is not the primary aim of the box.

RK: I agree with you. The point is not to qualify the mall as a selling realm. That has to be done by the people who deal with the science of selling. In someway we have to shut up and listen. The second is the intention of the architect to the invention of the mall. Lets not shy away from the fact that we want to be out of the ordinary. Even if you are an activist, and you create an archi- tecture which wants to make you like a Lucien Kroll, I want to build a village, where we went ahead and made a neighbourhood community and he went ahead and made a form that has historical precedence with what is happening in a village and everyone will build their own house. He sat with 180 families that became 360 families and he built a house of each one as they want- ed in the residential development. Not going to that awkward narcissist kind of detail, the fact that we have to build as an opportunity and at the point, the exercise is what does the mall be- come.
For example, there is a Zeilgalerie in Frankfurt. I do not know if you have seen that? It is a new one, that has the Fuksas kind of a glass splurge that goes through the mall and explodes itself like some- body just blew a bullet through the chest and what happens to it as the bullet travels through the body. There is another idea that he communicated was of a kind of a wind scoop that happens through the mall. It is an iconic representation of joy of an idea, that will live for sometime and af- terwards it dies.

NG: We are slightly digressing so I am going to interrupt. Can we go back to the idea of the event space that everyone brought up over here. What will be the difference in your opinions, about choreographing events the way that it is done in UB City or even Forum versus the way that you would design events for a city? The choreography is repeated, every mall has the same event. The end of the you have a type of activity that is acceptable public activity that is someway dominates the culture in the city.

AS: That is probably what is interesting in a BDA complex. The choreography does not start after you enter, the space. It starts from your house. The complex is very different across neighbour- hoods because it has learned to imbibe the area lot more than a mall would. The person who takes up a space in the complex pays 1/100th of the what someone in a mall does. There is a dif- ference between the person who owns a shop in a complex compared to a person who owns a