Modern America: A Theme Park of Consumerism
Before the great monster of the shopping mall that popped up in the 50/60's there were plazas and small shops in the large dense cities, however everything changed when the automobile became widespread. People moved from cities and fled to the white picket fences of the suburbs. Along with the mass of land that sprawled further and further from the city center, there was a new niche to serve the consumer needs of suburbia. And thus the shopping mall as we know it was born. This provided suburbia the space to walk around and shop, meet up with their friend, go to the arcade and grab lunch all under the comfort of AC in what Crawford elegantly calls "palaces of consumption. These palaces have cheapened the architecture and sense of place seen in typical city shopping plazas have instead emulated them much like theme parks such as Epcot emulate different country cultures from around the world. The shopping malls of suburbia have made society and the architecture that typically goes with them very shallow and soulless. But what is the next step in this consumerist cycle? Malls as a genre are starting to die as more and more people go online for their shopping. Will malls make a comeback or will they slowly disappear as abandoned castles as the new architecture of shopping becomes web page design?
As you mentioned, malls used to be "palaces of consumption" that attracted millions to their monumental shells of a building, often cheapening the architecture around them. These structures have taken up huge plots of land and have now become abandoned and wasted, creating a concrete platform in the center of suburban areas. In recent years we have been seeing a rise in adaptive reuse of older structures. Do you think these "consumerist palaces" deserve a second look or have they served their purpose and need to make way for something new to fill the abandoned area?
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that the unknown of the future of the built environment is because of human actions. One human can never predict what another human is thinking, therefor assumptions are made and junk-space is created. Consumerism sparked due to human actions but the future is unknown bc humans are so unpredictable that architects have to guess what is coming next, which in turns creates spaces that devalue the true intentions of architecture.
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