An open central space

During renovation of the Jersey Gardens Mall in the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, the developer chose Italian porcelain tile from Caesar as the paving material for around 16,000 square metres of floor space – an area equivalent to more than two football pitches!
Today’s temples of consumerism and symbols for American society, shopping centres were first built in the New World to make up for the lack of traditional meeting places, and served as locations where people could meet and do business. From here they gradually spread all over the world. The typical plazas and streets of European cities were brought together under a single roof to create large incubator-like structures containing shops, department stores and food courts. In this case, the name Jersey Gardens Mall reflects the developer’s intention to emulate not just the spaces of town centres but also city parks.
Jersey Gardens Mall extends over two levels with perimeter galleries and connecting footbridges. This means there are a number of double-height areas offering views above and below, as well as glimpses of the sky through perimeter slits in the roof.
The galleries serve as shopping promenades, covered boulevards where the predominantly artificial lighting is boosted by shafts of natural light at the edges of the structure. The flat roof consists of industrial metal beams which also support the suspended ceilings with spotlights, interrupted here and there with perimeter skylights. The double volume portions of the mall located at the ends and at the centre of the structure symbolise the plazas, the distribution hubs connected to the avenues on the ground floor and first floor.
Although large in extent, the Food Court is a more intimate and personal space whose height is further reduced by suspension lamps which emit a soft, suffused light.
The upper floor can be reached by lifts and escalators. Just as in old town centres, in shopping malls too the paving is very important as serves as a platform for events and pedestrian traffic flows. In this case porcelain tiles were used in the two main sizes 30×60 cm and 60×60 cm and in various colours. The cream colour tiles in the Flow series are mainly used in the transit and retail areas, while the brown colour signals strategic rest areas and the zones where the advertising kiosks are located.
The Flow collection with its more uniform texture coordinates with the Feel series, whose graphic design is based on juxtaposed white and pale grey coloured lines. The soft colours (cream, brown, white and grey) are dominant, enhancing the visibility of the signs, logos and graphics of the various stores.
For the mall’s toilets the client chose the E.motions collection with soft colours and a texture reminiscent of the veins of stone, giving the surface a very warm look and touch.