Mallwalkers at Al Oula Shopping Mall

Project: Burj Al Oula ยท Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia

This animation is a sketch for a software tool BlackBox Studio has recently begun developing. The goal of this project is to create a framework that accommodates a very large number of autonomous agents that are each capable of being defined with certain behavioral characteristics. The initial design environment for testing this tool would be a shopping mall, and the purpose of the tool would be to simulate pedestrian activity within the main circulation spaces of the mall.

Within this framework, each agent would inherit behavior characteristics that are associated with different shopper demographics. For example: Teenage women may move through the mall and respond to stimuli in different ways than elderly men or families with children. In some societies, people may tend to shop in groups whereas in others, there may be a predominance of individuals. The ratios and quantities of shopper types may vary greatly from morning to lunchtime to evening, and from weekdays to weekends. All of this intelligence would be parametrically embedded in the rules of the system, allowing the design team to tweak the variables and see the effect. Once the system is behaving properly, it can be used to study the design of the mall circulation space, adjusting walls, entrance locations, vertical circulation elements, and even visual cues such as signage. Working with retail experts, BlackBox could then use the framework to optimize the design in order to improve the shopping experience.


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