Mall Of The Emirates 3.0: Reinventing An Icon For A New Generation

In a city where novelty is the norm and luxury is mainstream, the challenge was to reimagine how an iconic mall could remain at the forefront of a market driven by emotional connection, wellbeing, and hyper-luxury. Supported by twenty development programmes over the next decade, this vision aims to transform the mall into a dynamic, evolving environment that deepens brand loyalty and redefines spatial experience in a digital age. The project began by transforming how the organisation understands its customers, moving beyond spending tiers to capture deeper emotional and lifestyle drivers. Qualitative research and over a million data points formed a new 'golden dataset' identifying 16 behavioural mindsets. A unified customer experience vision was built on five principles — curated, restorative, elevated, anchored, and transformative — guiding experience delivery across departments and ensuring excellence and consistency at every customer touchpoint. This is a design-led reinvention uniting strategy, data, space, and service for bold storytelling and execution. A spatial XP system defined new ways to classify and link the mall's physical spaces to customer journeys, intent, emotion, and data, resulting in a concept design for six strategic zones. This connected approach turned a once-fragmented experience into a cohesive, emotionally resonant one. Red Dot Award: Design Concept | Concept | Service Design