B2C Mother

Developed by supermarket giant Migros Aare, Westside is the first mall designed by the New York City studio of architect Daniel Libeskind, who rocketed to fame with his jagged design for the Jewish Museum Berlin and who now is the master-plan designer for New York’s new World Trade Center site. “Architects for a long time thought malls were below their dignity,” Libeskind told the monthly Architectural Record just after Westside’s opening in October. “But if you bring nature and culture into the building, you can make it a radically different place.”

Foot traffic has been strong, and local reviews of the design have generally been supportive. But some retailers complain that Westside’s angular shopping areas create limited sightlines and that pillars partially block some storefronts, reports Marc-Christian Riebe, CEO of Location Retail, a Swiss retail brokerage based in Zurich. “The design of the center is very nice, but we are always telling investors to never give the architects too much freedom to decide how to divide the space in a shopping center,” Riebe said. “From an architectural point of view, Westside looks very nice, but it is less useful for the retailers.”