How the death of suburban malls aided the filming of the third season of Stranger Things

2019-07-12T13:29:00-04:00

Fans of Netflix's science fiction horror series Stranger Things were recently treated to season 3, which almost entirely takes place within a suburban mall. Filled with neon, fake marble and geometric water features, the postmodern mall design became the ideal setting for the show set in 1985.

Interior of Gwinnett Place Mall. Photographer unknown.

What is first assumed to be an elaborate stage set or impressive CGI is actually a mall in Duluth, Georgia. Originally built in 1984, the Gwinnett Place Mall is one of many malls throughout America that faced declining visitorship during the early 2000s which led to the closure of many of its stores several years ago (only a few remain in operation, including Foot Locker, Finish Line, Victoria’s Secret and Macy’s).

This became a perfect opportunity for the producers of Stranger things to rent a large portion of the space for a fraction of the price it might have been even a decade ago, allowing them to invest more into making the mall app...

Mallification: The shopping mall isn't so dead after all

2018-01-23T14:13:00-05:00

[...] the ever increasing mallification of our environment threatens to undermine the public common ground on which our societies were founded: public places should address an abstract, inclusive notion of the public, instead of a defined, limited, and exclusive (in the literal sense of the word) audience. Conversely, we should not confuse or conflate trite stores (even if they place trees inside and call themselves town squares) to be an ersatz public domain.

Janno Martens' essay for Failed Architecture explores the many deaths and resurrections of the shopping mall and highlights three phenomena of mallification — the creeping privatization of public spaces and replacement of the organically grown city with an imagineered 'experience' of what only resembles an urban, collective space.

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How the death of suburban malls aided the filming of the third season of Stranger Things

Mallification: The shopping mall isn't so dead after all