I love the mall as much as I love the urban walking experience, museums and movie theaters. Today the stripmall is not just a part of my everyday life in Los Angeles [...] it is also a memory from my own suburban adolescence growing up in Illinois.
Jon Jerde, the LA architect both celebrated and loathed for his role in spreading shopping malls across US suburbia, died this month. Some might scoff at his life’s achievement. I am not one of them.
— theguardian.com
5 Comments
The Jerde retrospectives have been fascinating as intellectuals try to stake out territory (usually some kind of lazy, Venturi-esque argument)..as if its a zero sum game... malls vs. snooty high architecture. Why do you have to imply a conflict? But most of these articles reflect a false comparison that plagues all architecture media today. They stake out the thesis that Jerde=Malls and THAT is the only true architecture for our consumerist society. No-history does not show that. From what i've seen (Mall of America, for one) and looking at his other work, it seems that Jerde is talented, yes, but he doesn't really represent the mall architype any more than Mies represents modernism. He can't be blamed for the less good mall offshoots or celebrated as the pioneer in these ways, as some kind of symbol of consumerism, or american culture... who wouldn't be implicated on these terms? It's a shallow comparison. I prefer to look at each building on its own terms--what is the quality of the space? These buildings are successful in trying to make a place, rather than the placeless quality that has hindered many dying malls.
The mall is just a market with really big corporate vendors. The market has been central to almost every culture ever. To say that the mall is unique in that it mixes shopping with social space is really silly. That's always been the case. The only thing uniquely American about the mall is that only deep-pockets can sell stuff. Markets were traditionally for people to sell things and buy things...Now, unless you happen to be a millionaire you can only buy things. Sounds elitist to me. Cant imagine how anyone can make the argument that mall are "for us."
What the mall did in the US that is unique is to create micro-urbanism to facilitate a certain type of shopping, and impulse shopping of course. Impulse is good for business. Suburbia required too much effort between consumer and product. Too much time for thoughts to get in the way ....Wouldn't want that...The mall is "artificial" urbanism...walkability/foot traffic right smack in the middle of auto-centric suburbia. The mall is nothing more than a slice of urban space (homogenous corporate urban space but still urban in its walkability and scale)
Lightperson, Jerde is not equal to Malls. Rather, Jerde is equal to the reinvention of the Mall..
Exactly, he doesn't equal malls but that seems like the consensus of these memorial articles. But is Jerde even equal to the reinvention, or maybe he is just an outlier. The subject deserves greater care than a few reviewers waxing nostalgic at their memories of good ol' suburbia. More feelings journalism popular now.
Even if you like the work, it is still helpful to actually explain what it is you are talking about. For starters, many of the forms look similar to the post-modernists of the 60s, Meier, Graves, etc. Yes, the program is similar to most malls, but he seems to value openness and experience--and the outdoor model popular now. The market itself has always existed, as Jia-x says, but the ruthless efficiency of developers and lack of care into the experience (that Jerde seems to value) led to the obsolesense of many malls, but not all--the death of malls is greatly exaggerated. Though most would be wise to learn to value architecture as Jerde did.
So, it is possible to enjoy malls and Jerde for what they are, and recognize that it isn't walking in a Piazza in Italy or a street in New York, but pretty good for a town square in places that will never have that deep history of carless tradition. It amazes me that even a problematic type like malls can have so much variation is what makes architecture interesting, though you will never see politically minded journalists digging deep here.
Also, that Renzo piano mall in Cali is pure awesome, so...
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