Are malls dying? In 2025, the long tail of the COVID pandemic and the ever-growing ubiquity of online shopping looms ominously over physical retail. Meanwhile, the persistent decline of department stores means that shopping centres, long a cornerstone of North American suburban life, are at particularly acute risk. In Toronto, at least, a trio of marquee destinations — Yorkdale Mall, the Eaton Centre and Sherway Gardens — remain thriving retail meccas, while dozens of smaller and less prominent venues are quietly losing tenants, shuttering storefronts and making way for high-rise redevelopment. At Bayview Village mall, however, something different is stirring.
Located just north of Highway 401 in North York, the compact yet upscale shopping centre opened as an open-air arcade in 1963, before being converted into a covered galleria in 1977. A Kmart eventually made way for the first GAP store in Ontario; a testament to a venue punching above its weight. In the decades to come, the complex gradually pivoted to become a more high-end destination, cultivating a tenant roster of independent luxury boutiques in lieu of the chain stores typically found in suburban malls. Today, Bayview Village is an unconventional hybrid of the upscale and the everyday, anchored by a big box grocer, a pharmacy, and a liquor store. Over the coming years, a redevelopment of the site — led by developer Quadreal — is set to combine an ongoing mall renovation with a thoughtful redevelopment of surface parking into a dense urban neighbourhood.
In the meantime, acclaimed local designers Odami have designed a quietly exemplary new space for luxury womenswear retailer Andrews. For the brand — a 35-year-old Toronto institution with four locations across the city — the revitalized 510-square-metre space evokes the breadth and selection of a classic department store within a more intimate boutique setting.
Integrating a subtle homage to the mid-century heyday of mall shopping in a contemporary aesthetic, the room is organized around a series of low displays and counters. As Odami co-founders Arancha González Bernardo and Michael Fohring explain, the arrangement serves to delineate an open room into a series of more discrete zones. “We devised an arrangement of low-to-the-ground volumes that instil a sense of choreography in the substantial space, a flow of slab-like forms that overlap and intersect to create clearly defined areas,” says the duo.
Accented by opulent calacatta rosenoir marble, the slab-like forms — which serve as displays, storage and seats — are finished with beige microcement and outfitted with similarly coloured leather upholstery. The interplay of beige tones and understated textures is amplified by ambient lighting, fostering a sense of depth from the elemental composition of rectangles. In a distinctly architectural interior, the interplay of long, flat and distinctly horizontal forms evokes the proportions of the prairie style.
The simple yet intricately composed room creates an attractive palette for the clothing, footwear and accessories on display. Framing the room, five expansive light panels allude to the proportions of a luxurious floor-to-ceiling mirror, infusing the shopping experience with a hint of drama and performance. In a windowless space within an enclosed shopping mall, the design leverages its seeming limitations into signature elements.
“The store is located inside of a mall, so you don’t get that dynamic of the natural light shifting the mood of the space throughout the day. We created the oversized light panels to fulfill that expectation of intrigue and surprise,” say González Bernardo and Fohring. Here, the quotidian — and arguably outmoded — shopping mall setting is re-interpreted through a whimsical and romantic eye.
For Andrews, the careful interplay of tones, textures and light also embodies the retailer’s trademark understated luxury, while creating attractive and versatile showcases for every type of product. The generously proportioned displays also convey the sense of a semi-private shopping experience; each leather seat is paired with a counter-height space, facilitating the personalized customer service — and human touch — that continues to define the brand.
The store’s opening comes amidst a moment of broader transformation. During the next decade, Bayview Village is set to be redeveloped with high-rise housing and a new public landscape, with the mall itself already undergoing a partial reconstruction and interior renovation as new experience-driven tenants — including restaurants and spas — increasingly populate its halls. This scope of change reflects a profound transformation of brick-and-mortar shopping writ large. In its own small way, Odami’s design charts an elegantly nostalgic yet forward-looking course for the future. How to engage the big, existential questions facing legacy retailers? Create one hell of a nice place to shop.
The post Odami Finds Romance in a Toronto Shopping Mall appeared first on Azure Magazine.
