In the heart of Lithuania, The Serpent, a new E-commerce hub designed by Entropic, reimagines the standard big-box typology of conventional warehouse/retail programming, to create a continuous street of programs, with plazas, green spaces, and public functions. The project consisting of 70.000 Sqm of spaces dedicated for digital shopping, pick-up zones, and new forms of retail experience.
The challenge was to rethink the suburban shopping typology, to an experience-oriented retail typology. How can we match user experience, complex logistic movement, environmental response, and optimized retail design into a single cohesive project?
The project splits the site into two, with the public program to the front, and logistic drop-off zones to the back. The roof gently raises and lowers accommodating extra program requirements, whilst elegantly integrating itself into the surrounding landscape. Through short-term drop-off points, the project adapts to future conditions of integrating new forms of autonomous personal transportation and public mobility.
The architectural design reinterprets the standard warehouse section into a new contemporary roof motif, which serves to maximize solar EV gain and allows diffused light into the interior, optimizing the environmental response. A serrated retail promenade allows for every retail unit to maximize shop frontage and visibility. The Serpent connects with the city center through a bridge, which continues through the project on an upper-level streetscape creating great access to the upper-level program, until reaching its terminus, in an interior plaza.
