"What it is *trying* to do".

An excerpt of my analysis from a while back, when a couple of people and I were discussing why it seems that the only people we know who "enjoyed" Orchard Central (OC) are architects:

I'm glad you brought this up because I've been thinking about my experience with OC as well but haven't had the chance to articulate. I too 'enjoyed' the building when I first visited, but my non-aki, designer companion wasn't the slightest impressed. Upon some reflection, I realised that the appreciation of its playfulness of interior volumes, clever circulation, etc are all typical architectural devices we (and more so an NUS effect, I reckon) that are emphasised in school. I actually caught myself thinking about how various spaces were developed in drawings, and then consider how the building looks as a scaled model.

OC's practically a basic constructed menu packed with a host of The Best Spatial Techniques, and exactly like an index lacks a--for want of a better term--soul that produces a greater sum of parts. Resulting in and enjoyment only in parts--for me at least. Not to mention, as I've detailed above, a lot of this enjoyment is divorced from a more visceral appreciation of the space itself, but rather in abstraction of understanding what it is *trying* to do at various turns; definitely a kind of in-group, 'specialist' sensitivity that most wouldn't give a damn.

Ultimately, it's a shopping mall that's programmatically bland, and by conventional big-mall standards marred by unattractive wares as well. (Again, at least to me.)

[...]

I totally have a gripe about [OC's campaign ad featuring two people running through the entire building] as well. An acquaintance of mine is one of the key creatives behind the ad, but I haven't had heart to ask him just WTF he thinks is going to be endearing about putting two Caucasian people running around the building. There're several levels of fail to the campaign, but my discussion with several other ad people suggests that I'm not the only one who experiences some cognitive dissonance singularly from their choice of models.

From the comments above, functional experience is mostly wanting, architectural marvel is divorced even if interesting to me (seriously, if you try so hard but ultimately have to be understood from an architect's POV...) for whoever cares to notice, my suspicion is that OC is positioned more as an architectural artifact (failing as an artifice) and functionally excused with little to no care to shoppers. (That's maybe why architects like it; it's such a fuck-the-client/user wankjob. Sorry archietechs!) And if anyone else caught the OC special on Channel 5 recently, I don't think the conjecture's implausible.