Invented 60 years ago, the mall has shaped and reflected consumer culture ever since. Discover these controversial, innovative or failed architectural experiments, currently featured in an exhibition in Munich.
Image: Thomas Mayer
Advertisement
The strategic architecture of shopping malls
How have malls shaped or reflected our consumer culture? An exhibition organized by Munich's Achitecture Museum explores the architecture of consumption through October 16.
Image: Pietro Paolini/TerraProject
The birth of the mall
The Southdale Center in Minnesota opened in 1956. It is the mother of all shopping malls. It was designed by the Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen, who hated the car-centric culture of the US. He wanted to create centers where people could socialize outside of their suburban homes. The term Gruen Effect, named form him, describes dazzling shop displays that lead to impulse shopping.
Image: Gruen and Associates
Disavowing his own concept
However, the inventor of the shopping mall was disappointed by the way his ideas were "bastardized," for example when such centers were built in European cities like his home town Vienna, where Gruen felt they were unnecessary. The Main-Taunus-Zentrum, located on the outskirts of Frankfurt, was the first German shopping center to be built in the style of the American mall.
Image: ECE Projektmanagement GmbH&Co.KG
A castle turned into a mall
Here's an example of a controversial project right in the center of the German city of Braunschweig. Heavily damaged during World War II, the Brunswick palace was completely demolished in 1960. The facade of the palace was rebuilt by the architects Grazioli and Muthesius from 2005 to 2007. Beyond the doors, the "historical" building houses a glossy shopping center called the Schloss-Arkaden.
Image: Thomas Mayer
Germany's largest shopping mall
Built in 1994-1996 in a former industrial district of Oberhausen, the CentrO is the largest mall in the country. Featuring elements of traditional industrial architecture in its facade, it is considered an exceptional example of postmodern architecture. The British mall Meadowhall, with its food court making up a central oasis, inspired the architects from the firm Rhode Kellermann Wawrowsky.
Image: Thomas Mayer
Symbol of a new Istanbul
As one of the most densely populated cities in the world, Istanbul is more famous for its bazaars than its malls. The Zorlu Center, built from 2007-2013, was designed by award-winning architects Emre Arolat and Murat Tabanlioglu. The green rooftops of this four-tower building added value to this ambitious project. It also houses the largest performing arts center in the city.
Image: Thomas Mayer
Architectural tricks in San Diego
The Westfield Horton Plaza, built in 1982-85, aimed to refurbish the historic center of San Diego. With its mismatched levels, sudden drop-offs and brightly colored facades, it was designed by architect Jon Jerde as "experience architecture." While malls are usually conceived to direct the attention of shoppers towards the goods, this space became an attraction in itself.
Image: The Jerde Partnership
Dead malls
Through economic decline and changing shopping habits, the number of "dead malls" has strongly increased in the last decade. Akron's Rolling Acres Mall was the largest one in Ohio when it opened in 1975. The dingy, dark mall closed in 2008. Photojournalist Seph Lawless documented the space after vandals shot out the mall's glass skylights.
Image: Seph Lawless
Failed experiments
This ambitious building, "El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya," in Caracas, Venezuela, was initially planned as a drive-in mall. Construction stopped a year before its completion in 1960. The building was abandoned for over 20 years, then squatted by some 10,000 people. It later served as headquarters for intelligence agencies and is now a prison, with parts of it abandoned and surrounded by slums.
Image: Pietro Paolini/TerraProject
Architecture to make you buy
The exhibition "World of Malls - Architectures of Consumption" is held at the Pinakothek der Moderne Museum in Munich from July 14 through October 16, 2016. A book covering the exhibition, published by Hatje Cantz, is also available in English.
9 images1 | 9
As the inventor of the concept of the modern mall, the Austrian architect Victor Gruen "may well have been the most influential architect of the 20th century," wrote Malcolm Gladwell in "The New Yorker."
Gruen designed not only the US first mall, the Southdale Center in Minnesota, which opened in 1956, but over 50 malls in the US until the mid-1970s. However, he actually resented what these shopping centers turned out to be and didn't like to be called the father of this type of architecture. "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments," he declared in 1978.
For better or worse, malls have been sprouting up throughout the world for the last six decades. They remain one of the most controversial type of buildings; each new project is typically stalled by protests.
Though spectacular new buildings are still being conceived, more and more malls are dying, as consumers are changing their shopping habits. From the initial "bunker" style architecture in the suburbs, modern centers have evolved to maximize the shopper's experience - and that can be challenging when one simply needs to buy something quickly.
The exhibition "World of Malls - Architectures of Consumption," organized by the Architecture Museum in Munich, explores the transformation process of the shopping mall from the 20th to the 21st century. The show is being held at the Pinakothek der Moderne from July 14 through October 16, 2016.
