Have you ever lost your car in a parking garage?

At The Dubai Mall, it was a top customer complaint and it was costing Emaar real business. Five internal zones. Up to ten floors. Multiple entry and exit points from the street and mall. After Walker Parking’s significant re-engineering of the traffic routing, one challenge still remained for visitors and shoppers: figuring out where they’d parked.

Orientation, naturally
We designed the wayfinding system leveraging physical cues in the environment to support intuitive orientation and navigation. Zone naming, floor numbering, color coding, column and aisle identification, and clear exit guidance, were all designed to answer  a single question “Where am I and how do I get back?”

Strategies to build trust
Emphasizing decision-making landmarks, clear naming strategies for mall and street entrances, and simple graphic and naming protocols, the system turned a maze of columns and drive aisles into a navigable logical place people could trust, whether entering and exiting the mall by car or on foot.

Clarity from constraint 
With only existing surfaces and lighting to work with and using primarily only wall and floor paint, every element had to be instantly legible and direct, proof that effecting clarity doesn't require complex systems to communicate.

This is the kind of problem we love; big, messy, and solvable with the right system.