Molepolole Shopping Complex Project
However, this status quo is changing as more shopping malls are being built in small towns. A shining example of this occurrence is the new Mafenyatlala Shopping Complex which has recently been completed in the traditional town of Molepolole, 50km west of Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. Construction of the P55 million shopping complex project commenced on January 2008 and was completed in June 2009.
Client Brief
The client wanted a shopping mall, with one supermarket, a hardware and food area. In response to this brief, a building was build with two wings (Eastern and Western wings), with a road and parking in the middle.
Description
Both the eastern and western wings have covered walkways for the public and a large central car park with the service road running along the back of the buildings. The site is almost square with a steep slope from the main road towards the back of the site. The site is accessed from the main Molepolole road.In the not-so-distant past major shopping complexes were a characteristic of cities and big towns around the country, forcing consumers to travel to cities for a wider range of commodities.
The complex comprises of takeaways/restaurants, line shops, medical suite, banks, supermarket, hardware shop, furniture shop, small boutiques. The total built up area is 16994 m².
The overall building is built according to its functionality & convenience for the users. The eastern wing is ‘L’ shaped with the restaurants and supermarket as well as some shops being situated in this wing. The supermarket is strategically placed at the corner of the “L” shaped building and it is raised to enable full view from the main road. The restaurants are placed to the northern side near the entrance where full view of the main road can be accessed. This has also been placed as close as possible to the taxi drop off for easy access for public transport users as well.
The western wing has the hardware at its far end to minimize disturbance of loading trucks. The truck access road runs behind the western wing to avoid congestion of traffic & disturbance during peak business hours.
Remarkable features
There are towers which are strategically placed to highlights entrances and to breakup the elevations.
Challenges
The main challenge was the presence of a, somewhat, steep slope. It was very important that the relationship between the walkway and the parking kerb line is kept constant & this slope posed a difficulty to this end. Its presence meant it would be costly to fill up the whole site in order to maintain one level of the car park. The solution was to, firstly, step the building twice and, secondly, adopt ramps on the walkways at each change of level. This was successfully done to minimize the steepness of the slope.
The land beneath the platform was not trusted for construction so a raft foundation was adopted to cross this hurdle and minimize heavy reliance on the platform. The roof is supported at two ends without intermediate columns to allow internal walls to be moved at will. Given the distance between these columns, a third one would have been necessary. However, partitions walls have been used between shops to enable adjustments without compromising the building. This renders a third column unnecessary.
Project team
Project Managers: Moseleoa (Pty) Ltd
Architects: FMA Architects
Civil/Structural: Lesedi Consulting Engineers
Mechanical/Electrical: Qed Consulting Engineers
