From Shopping Mall to Social Infrastructure: Reimagining Vega City as a “Third Space”
- mbharch
- Nov 6
- 5 min read
In cities everywhere, malls are at a crossroads. Once the beating heart of retail, many are now struggling to compete with online shopping and shifting consumer expectations. What gives a mall relevance today is no longer just the number of stores it houses, but the kind of life it enables.
At Vega City Mall in Bangalore, MBH Architects asked a different question:
What if a mall wasn’t just a retail destination, but a third space?
A third space is a sociological term for a place that is neither home (first space) nor workplace (second space), but a shared public environment where people gather, linger, and belong. Think of the plaza where a neighborhood meets, the café where students spend hours working, the place you go “just to be around others.”
MBH’s design vision for Vega City positions the mall as a modern urban commons, a place where retail, culture, and community meet.
In this rapidly transforming corridor, alive with cafés, microbreweries, and growing residential hubs, Vega City is poised to become a true urban anchor: a place that reflects and amplifies the energy of South Bangalore while connecting seamlessly to the city’s expanding metro network.
Understanding the Opportunity
Vega City sits at one of South Bangalore’s most active intersections – Bannerghatta Road and the Outer Ring Road – surrounded by universities, hospitals, cafés, and established residential neighborhoods. A new metro line will soon place thousands of commuters literally above the mall each day, bringing rare visibility and footfall potential.
Yet, the mall’s strongest asset was hiding in plain sight: its public plaza. The space hosted pop-ups, festival stalls, and seasonal installations, but it wasn’t designed for everyday lingering.
So MBH began with a deceptively simple ambition: Design for belonging, not just buying.
With the metro line nearing completion, commuters will soon experience the mall from a unique elevated vantage point. This creates an opportunity for Vega City to establish itself as a recognizable landmark in the city’s daily visual landscape, turning its façade into a familiar marker within Bangalore’s growing mental map.
Design Strategy: Retail Placemaking
Rather than asking how do we renovate a mall? the team asked how do we make people want to stay? Retail placemaking begins with the belief that a mall’s true value lies not in its square footage, but in the emotional connections formed within it. It is design that prioritizes how people feel in a space, how they move through it, how they pause within it, and how they choose to return to it.
In this approach, the mall becomes a backdrop for everyday rituals: waiting for a friend, taking a study break, browsing without an agenda, sharing a snack, or simply sitting and watching life unfold. When a space supports those small, unstructured moments it becomes memorable.
To achieve this, the Vega City concept blends culture, community, and commerce into a single experience. Design decisions are guided by human behavior:
Will this make someone linger? Will it invite exploration? Will it support chance encounters? As dwell time grows, so does economic value Multi-use spaces invite events, pop-ups, and product launches, creating new revenue streams and maintaining a constant sense of novelty. Thoughtful circulation—movement guided through light, scent, sightlines, and delight—brings visibility to under-performing tenants and encourages discovery.
From this philosophy emerged four key interventions that guide the entire project: the Plaza and Approach, the Facade, the Atrium, and the Food Court. Each works together to extend dwell time, support multiple ways of using the space, and create a richer and more sensory experience throughout the mall.
The Plaza: Turning Edges Into Invitations
Today, the mall’s boundary wall creates a hard edge, visually and psychologically separating it from the city. MBH’s first design intervention was therefore at the threshold where city meets mall.
Inspired by the local tradition of the Ashwat Katte, a raised platform built around a sacred tree where people naturally gather, the team reimagined the front plaza as an urban social stage.
What changes:
Tiered seating integrated into landscaping
Flexible zones for pop-ups, art installations, music, or festivals
Reconfigured pedestrian entry and clearer drop-off circulation
Opening the H&M façade to activate the plaza visually and commercially
These moves transform the plaza into a place for lingering, waiting for cabs, hanging out with friends, or stumbling into seasonal programming—as opposed to simply passing through.
The redesign also introduces a welcoming entry sequence defined by modern luxury. A new colonnade marked with champagne gold detailing frames the entrance, and a gently curving wall lined with warm metal highlights guides visitors inward. This reconfiguration replaces the existing direct-to-lift-lobby entry with a more gracious and memorable arrival moment, while also carving out a new retail frontage that enhances both experience and leasable value.
The Interior: Movement, Memory, and Pause
Inside, the problem was fragmentation. Corridors felt disconnected, kiosks created bottlenecks, and there was nothing for visitors to discover or pause for.
MBH’s approach reframes circulation as experience:
Atrium as anchor: redesigned as a garden plaza with wood tones, indoor greens, and more daylight
Remove kiosk clutter: reorganize kiosks to eliminate negative space and restore intuitive flow
Sensory design: light, scent, sound, and materiality guide movement
Instagrammability: moments of delight become identity
The atrium becomes the heart—warm, green, and filled with daylight.
The Food Court: A Social Living Room
Nothing increases dwell time like food.
MBH reimagines the food court as a social node for every demographic; students finishing assignments, professionals working remotely, families lingering after meals.
Features include:
Community tables for large groups
Café-style seating for solo work
Lounge clusters for long stays
Graphic storytelling and cultural cues from Bangalore’s arts and street food culture
On the terrace level, a rooftop dining environment becomes a destination of its own with soft lighting, lush planting, evening breezes.
The Facade: A New Urban Marker
Because of the incoming metro line, commuters will see the mall’s façade from above every day. To take advantage of this rare visibility, the design introduces:
Dynamic digital facades
Transparent LED screens
Facade choreography that shifts from day to night
The mall becomes a landmark in the city’s mental map.
Interstitial Space: Connection as Experience
Between the mall and the adjacent hotel lies a shared urban void that once functioned purely as a service and circulation space. MBH’s design reframes this zone as an active connector that strengthens the relationship between the two buildings. Existing bridges, once utilitarian, are reimagined as visual extensions of the mall’s design language. At ground level, a new landscaped plane blends seamlessly with the front plaza while also organizing loading and service functions in a more discreet and efficient manner. What was once a leftover space now becomes a meaningful part of the mall’s social and spatial experience.
More Than a Mall: A “People’s Place”
Malls today have the power to become civic assets. They can be public squares, local cultural stages, and modern gathering spaces.
By designing for social value, Vega City unlocks commercial value:
Higher footfall
Longer visits
Greater tenant visibility
New revenue streams from events and activations
In a fast-growing city like Bangalore, malls no longer have to be marketplaces. They can be modern third places where we return to, not because we need to shop, but because we want to belong.
Commerce may bring people in, but community makes them stay.
Design that invites people to linger creates measurable results: longer visits, greater tenant visibility, and increased revenue. If you’re ready to rethink your mall or mixed-use space through the lens of placemaking and value creation, we’re ready to help.