Designing Nature: Sensory Impressions of the Royalmount Mall Shopping Experience

I enter the mall complex through its outdoor parking lot. I head down a windy walkway that leads to an expansive urban park. The crunch of gravel reaches my ears as I pass through the tree-lined walkway that crisscrosses the garden. Despite the cold, I take a minute to sit on the cool concrete lip of the wall lining the path and I listen to the breeze rattle the few leaves left on the trees. The scent of earth fills my nose from the damp soil and mulch of the raised garden beds.

Eager to head into the warmth of the indoors, I stand and continue my walk through the maze. I pause by a fire pit which I’m sure would have been tempting to linger by had it been lit. I notice several sculptures set into the garden and, as I walk towards the main entrance, I stop to take in my reflection in one of them. It is comprised of a huge silver sphere perched above a pond; its surface is crowned with crimson eagles. The artwork entitled Le Leurre is a piece by contemporary Canadian artist duo Cooke-Sasseville. The reflective material of the orb is meant to draw attention to the relationship between the artwork and its environment (Le Leurre). The artwork’s reflection of its environment, merging the natural and the artificial, foreshadows the constructed natural elements I will soon find within the mall. Le Leurre’s smoothness is too tempting to resist so I graze my hand over the slippery metal surface and feel its coldness seep into my fingertips. Since this is an artwork it is probably not meant to be touched, but its placement close to the walkway and its hardy materials invite my tactile exploration nonetheless.

I pass through the main doors of the mall and pause to appreciate the texture of the metal handles. They are wrought into the shape of a tree branch, which perfectly echoes the trees I just left behind. As I step through the door the first thing I notice in the space is a wall of perfumed air. It seems as though the perfume is spread with diffusers since there are no storefronts in this section. These scents are likely an intentional aspect of the design because they are concentrated and blend seamlessly in the wide, brightly lit space, mixing with the cool air that followed me inside. The barrier-like effect of the scent fades as I move further through the short entrance hallway into the central atrium. This central area forms the meeting point of corridors that lead in different directions of the building like the spokes of a wheel. At its center is a huge pink sculpture (Montreal-based artist Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s The Wishing Bear, 2024). The sculpture’s smooth, shiny texture faintly mirrors the lights overhead as children laugh and play beneath it.  

I look up to the top of the mall expecting to see a covered ceiling. Instead, I find that there's no obstruction of the sky. The whole roof is made of paneled glass and I can see the blueness of the sky layered with my reflection. I breathe deeply and notice that the loftiness of the space imparts a feeling of freshness as the visible panels of the sky seem to suggest that I can breathe the same crisp air as outside.

I wander through the corridors of the Royalmount and I am surprised to see a similar landscape to the one outdoors. However, here the landscape is carefully maintained and tamed. Earthen beds with plants growing from them are centered in the halls. These are topped with artificial trees, their rough, textured trunks tower above me and spread their plastic leaves to the sky.  A smooth stone border surrounding the trees acts as a seating area. These oversized planters take the place of the usual benches found in a mall. I lower myself onto one breathing in the faint woodsy aroma of the living plants and moss that are growing at the foot of the artificial tree. This concrete seat is cool to the touch but it is missing the cold bite of the one I recently encountered outdoors. I take a moment to lean back and I observe the sky again through the roof of glass, which is partially hidden by the spreading leaves of the artificial maple tree. 

Leaving my seat behind, I circulate through the mall, observing the storefronts set along the wide halls. I am surprised that the abundance of glass found elsewhere in the design of the mall, from the banister on the second floor to the huge windows set into the sides of the building is missing from many of the store exteriors.  Most of the storefronts are overtaken by walls made from textured materials including granite, stucco, or ceramic.  The inclusion of these elements echoes the natural rock and molded concrete found in the garden. I notice these textures spanning the walls outside the stores, in expansive arches, and in the background of many of the stores brand names. These walls are painted a mundane beige color yet I can see the details of the rock-like texture in each and brush my hand over the surface to confirm the roughness of the bumps. The muted colors of these walls unify the storefronts and lend the shops the aesthetic of an adobe house, more at home in a sunny locale than a mall.

The blending of indoor and outdoor features in the Royalmount Mall comes to a head as I reach the upper level. My steps lead me through a busy food court and onto an outdoor terrace where an especially unusual sensory encounter awaits. This open-air space is punctuated by beds of plants next to a concrete boardwalk that wraps around one side of the urban park. I walk around the boardwalk, which guides me to the most unexpected sensory interaction I encounter at the Royalmount. It is the installation Dent-de-lion (2024) by Montreal’s Collectif Escargo— a metal slide that cascades from the upper level of the mall to reach the garden below. The artwork’s spiral shape is polished to a muted chrome and crowned by a huge yellow flower. After waiting my turn, I grasp the side of the opening and get ready to woosh down the spiral. The metal is cool under my fingers and with a slight whisper of my clothing against it, I slide down. My kinesthetic and tactile senses are stimulated as I am gently rocked by each curve of the slide. The ride ends with a lurch as I reach the bottom. The novelty and participatory dimension of the slide calls to mind another slide by German artist Carsten Höller entitled Test Site (2006) a proprioceptive artwork that was installed in Tate Modern and, like many of the artist's other works, is meant to infuse the gallery space with the fun atmosphere of a theme park (Spence, 2022). A similarity between this artwork and the ludic slide at the Royalmount can easily be drawn here, as the mall’s version speaks to the inner child of the shopper. This correlation is confirmed by the sound of both children and adults laughing as they slide down it or run up the steep steps next to it to ride down again.

Having wandered through the whole mall I can appreciate the unified aesthetic of the space and its juxtaposition between nature and luxury. I begin to question why the inclusion of natural elements was made at all. Arguably it is in the contrast between the indoor and outdoor spaces as one enters the mall that the crux of the Royalmount's appeal lies. The interior of the mall operates beyond a simple arrangement of shops or the crowded space of the department store-style shopping experience found in Montreal's Eaton Center. Here the space is wider like an arcade shopping center. This particular arcade is open to the air and sky but is also covered in a comfortable glass case that protects shoppers from the weather outside. The design of a space inside and out ultimately brings a sophisticated edge to nature, offering a unique shopping experience that invites a leisurely atmosphere and the feeling that I am walking through an open space regardless of whether I am indoors or out.