Context > Facts of Shopping Malls
"Today, cultural activities in the public square have been absorbed into enclused shopping malls and become a commodity for sale. The shopping mall has created a new architecture for human assembly, one immersed in a world of commerce in which culture exists in the form of commodified experiences."
- from Jeremy Rifkin's "The Age of Access"
Mall Culture
Traditionally, the market and the public square had different roles. The former had been a place for commerce and trade. The later had functioned as a cultural common where people engage in various activities such as festivals, entertainment, and civic involvement.
But in less than forty years, the public square, which was the meeting ground for culture, has all but disappeared, swallowed up by a radical new concept - indoor shopping malls.
Shopping malls are becoming places where one can by access to lived experiences of every kind. More important, these are the places where most people spend much of their leisure time.
Mall are sophisticated communication mediums designed to reproduce parts of the culture in simulated commercial forms. They rely on all of the most advanced electronic technologies to create an artificial cultural milieu. Culturally choreographed architectural motifs, automated climate-controlled environments, sophisticated lighting schemes, and computerized surveillance systems all work together to "communicate" a special cultural place, different from the shared cultural spaces that exist on the other side of the mall gates.
Overflow of Malls
The mall culture is a creature of suburban development and the spread of the highway culture. The first enclosed mall - Southale - was constructed in Edia, a suburb of Minneapolis, in 1956. In 2005, there are more than 48,000 shopping malls, including both indoor and outdoor malls, in the United States.
But the enclosed shopping malls are now facing a slow death due to many reasons. Contemporary trends in consumer architecture favor big box stores, open-air "lifestyle centers" and strip malls.
The emegement of abandoned shopping malls is the contextual theme of this 'Mall-E' project.
References & Resources
The Age of Access by Jeremy Rifkin
Havard Design School Guide to Shopping
Lablescar: the Retail History Blog
Malls of America
The Role of Entertainment in Shopping Centers & Malls
Shopping Mall Studies
Statistics about Shopping Mall