Westfield

I went to Westfield yesterday with Joan, Bettina and Owen.


Westfield is London's answer to Malaysia's Mid Valley MegaMall and Singapore's Suntec City.

But how does Westfield compare with Mid-Valley and Suntec? Here are the statistics:

Floor space:
Mid Valley( including The Gardens) - 8.8mil sq.ft
Suntec City - 0.88mil sq.ft
Wesftfield - 1.6mil sq.ft

So clearly our Mid-Valley can devour the entire Westfield and still feel hungry afterwards because there's space for four more!

But I'm not surprised. Mid-Valley is like the biggest shopping mall beast I've ever come across. There're two hotels, banks, gyms, clinics, a cinema, bowling alley and lots of restaurants housed under one roof!

Westfield is just a shopping mall without these frills.

Even that, Westfield is the largest shopping mall in Europe!

However I can't compare like that because we do not have the equivalent to London's Oxford Street.

If you take Harrods and Selfridges out, the shopping experience in London has always been associated with walking in the high streets rather than in a shopping complex.

Westfield gives me a weird feeling. I feel like I'm walking in a giant's land. The size of the shops' names were extremely oversized!

The size of the shop's name was so huge you can even read this from KL!

Then again when I stepped into Westfield, I was very impressed with the interior. You can see this is the result of architects being able to work with engineers and engineers being able to tolerate architects!


Why? When I looked at the structure, I thought that this is more of an engineering rather than an architectural feat! Curves are difficult to build in engineering. Furthermore, the use of ridiculous amount of glass on the wavy roof makes it unimaginable if the engineer didn't swear while designing it.

The wavy roofs

To be fair, it's quite an environmentally friendly building if this was based entirely on the generous use of glass because this will lead to lower energy consumption than if it was covered up like the Mid Valley.


We've also found some interesting things while walking around. We saw the new Google phone, called as the Android.

Am not sure if this is already in other parts of the world but this could possibly be the new fad drink that will hit the market soon - milkshake with snack bars!

It's really nothing clever in this beverage. Just blend milk, icecream and the snack bar of your choice e.g Mars, Snickers, Kit Kat, Kinder Bueno etc...you name it.


Another thing I like about this place is there are plenty of places to sit and relax when you're tired.

Maybe I'll go there again next week.