OMA have unveiled plans for a new shopping centre in Australia that will integrate public spaces, community amenities and facilities for childcare and education to create a more communal experience. Commissioned for Sandhurst Retail, the Wollert Neighbourhood Centre will be located in the Wollert suburb of Whittlesea, just north of Melbourne. Due to break ground in 2023, the 9,000sq m (97,000sq ft) facility is intended to be a neighbourhood asset

A new urban lagoon and park, designed by MVRDV, has opened in the preserved ruin of a shopping mall in central Tainan, Taiwan. The China-Town Mall was built next to the Tainan Canal in 1983, the rise of online shopping means it no longer serves its purpose. Instead, the Urban Development Bureau of the Tainan City Government commissioned MVRDV to create Tainan Spring as a new public space and as

Fyra have designed a new concept self-service store in Helsinki, Finland, where online shopping customers can have items delivered, collect them, try clothes items on and return items that they don't want to keep. Created for Finnish postal and logistics company Posti and developed in partnership with consulting company Motley, Box is based on the growth of online retail and the recognition that there was a gap to fill in

Developers of shopping malls and large retail centres can no longer ignore leisure, the director of the International Retail Real Estate Market (MAPIC) has told CLAD. Nathalie Depetro said that “the growth of digital e-commerce has pushed the need to make the physical shopping experience more amazing than ever before to remain relevant.” MAPIC 2016, which takes place from 16 to 18 November in Cannes, is one of the world's

Jiangnan Global Harbor, one of the world’s largest leisure-led retail schemes, has officially opened near Shanghai. The 500,000sq m (5.3 million sq ft), five-level project is located in the city of Changzhou, within the prosperous Jiangsu province. Designed by architects Chapman Taylor, the scheme has a vast Art Deco-inspired atrium with giant LED screens and musical fountains; 60,000sq m (645,800sq ft) of space dedicated to bars, restaurants and cafés; and

The Taiwanese city of Tainan will recapture its maritime past with the creation of a man-made lagoon on the site of a derelict and disused shopping mall. The large outdoor pool will be the central focus of a new green public space linking the city’s downtown with its historic canal network. The competition-winning design is the work of Dutch architects MVRDV, together with The Urbanist Collaborative and LLJ Architects. Tainan’s

Foster + Partners’ Crossrail Place development has opened at Canary Wharf in London. A curving timber lattice roof wraps around four levels of leisure and retail facilities and a rooftop public garden. The opening comes three years before Canary Wharf Crossrail Station itself throws open its doors in 2018, serving the new Crossrail railway line. Fosters said the public garden is densely planted with trees and plants and is interspersed