Junkspace: An exploration of Tyson's Corner Mall and the Growth of it Mini City
When thinking about “the world in a shopping mall” the first
thing that comes to mind for me is the idea of designing in a mold or the idea
of architecture becoming so systemized that it no longer has any
creativity. The article talks about the
standard method of mall design proposed by architect Victor Gruen and the exact
science of numbers that goes into creating the perfect mall layout to maximize
profit. I would consider the mall junkspace,
swallowing up every program necessary to allow it to function fully on its own
and in the end being nothing unique or different outside of its scale. The mall provides the safety that the streets
can’t sealed inside its junkspace bubble.
Has the shopping mall really become the new “downtown,” the new social
center for society? Has the demand of
consumerism and profit driven architecture to become no better than the
shopping mall? Junkspace? In what other
ways has consumerism driven the formation of new city centers and the
architecture that makes them up?
These images all represent growth and extensive development plans for Tysons, a census-designated place (CDP) in Northern VA that spurred from the construction of Tyson's Corner Mall, practically a small city in itself. Supporting this growth is the massive amount of urban sprawlers that don't wish to commute into DC daily for business. The best part is you can go "downtown" for your lunch break, aka the food court which resembles a small main street within Tyson's Corner.
When I look at these images, I get a sense of a new city. I know nothing about CDP, but this seems like an appropriate response to the inaccessibility of DC. Consumerism has always been the driving factor in making the "social center of society." Downtown areas have established over the years because of society's need to shop for groceries, clothing, and household things. The difference is a downtown shopping scene is fragmented by specialty stores interconnected by outdoor space. The shopping mall simply removes the outdoor element. This CDP plan incorporates the exterior back into the plan, much like the layout of a downtown. Additionally there is vertical density that is common to the city but missing in the mall. The city cannot accommodate everyone, or else we would end up with sprawling junkspace that we see in LA. Instead, we have to create additional areas of density that maybe become cities in their own right.
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