JEM, THE NEW MALL IN JURONG EAST
“In the recent years, and currently, so many shopping malls and other developments have been propping up around Jurong East MRT station. To be honest, I felt super annoyed at first. I mean, I am only twenty, and I can already say Singapore is changing a lot! So, when JEM (Jurong East Mall) and Westgate began construction, damn, I thought, I have to look at buildings while waiting for the train.
However, when JEM and Westgate completed and opened for business, my reactions was different. Well yes, it is malls, malls, malls, but it does make sense to build malls connected to the Jurong East MRT station, well, IMM is quite a distance.
Okay, put aside all the scandalous incidents, haha, actually no. I personally think it is quite devastating and unfortunate that there are more than one accident to happen under the course of one year. Remembering the words of the older generation, safety should be as important as the other aspects of design. Or are we moving too fast?”
Looking from the train station’s platform, it is quite an interesting piece of urban fabric to see how two malls have been designed to actually be beside each other. With the gentle play of lights by the H&M pavilion, to the well-planted greens, it is not just stacks of concrete boxes. The two facades of the malls seem to almost converge at point, although only leaving a slit of sky, it is actually visually comfortable to look at.
The two facades, with well-planted greens, stitch a very natural and soft urban landscape that you would not usually find at any other malls.
In between the two malls, is a street donned with seats and landscaping creating a gentle pathway that the public can walk through and also take a rest. So, taking a right turn, one would enter JEM through the entrance next to Starbucks. This is where you start to be amazed by the design of the mall.
The greens planted at the ground level of the mall made the transition from the outside to the interior of the mall very gentle and pleasant. JEM is one of the first few malls that had interior greenery that is not unnatural.
From the green urban pathways at the ground level, to the skylight, JEM changes throughout the day. The interplay between the man-made skylight fixtures and the leaves of the trees in the mall create a beautiful living foliage that produces soft and gentle shadows in the day on the floors of the shopping mall. The visual effects of the factors above create a very gentle architecture that is not too brutal for the daily commuter.
It is quite a change, from the usual box shopping malls that we have here in Singapore. The trees planted transforms the mall’s walkways into indoor pedestrian streets and they also visually connect the different levels of the mall. One can sense the ‘communal-esque’ setting that the architect has created for JEM, and it fits for the location.
If anything, JEM seems to be a positive example for the malls of Singapore.
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