A Mall with a View

Critical Regionalism a discussion between global and local cultures. How do we as architect’s balance this idea, are there cases where a more global approach is fitting and disregarding the locality of it all. This seems to go against our learning of replying to the context. The site in this situation could be anywhere. I Think back to Christmas time shopping with my Mom outside of Asheville. We went to Pier 1 that was located on this flat graded site but overlooked the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now in this case the store/strip mall’s architecture did nothing to highlight the fantastic view they had. It was just one big rectangle plopped on the site with no regard to the context around. I noticed this mishandling as soon as we drove through the parking lot. This is so disappointing to me, the opportunity to enhance the shopping experience or incorporate the architecture to ta more local vernacular it would have been more successful…. Maybe successful in an Architect’s mind, yes it does function as provide the services needed to complete the transactions. I can picture this happening in an office where you just silo your store onto a plot of land with no regard to the surrounds and the greater plan as a whole. With this example the need to balance the global and local needs is apparent. How do we check ourselves to make sure we are responding accordingly to the local needs and the global needs of these large chains.