Alchemy of Building a Shopping Center – Critical Points of View To Formulating a Paradise written by Henna Joronen
Outlining
1.Pounding a Mall
2. How architecture creates thinking - Ideology and model behind mass consumption
3.Architect as fascist, or is it him to blame?
4. I call them space invaders.
Introduction
Alchemy of Building a Shopping Center is an article trying to
define and understand the mental landscape, the body of profit
architecture and meanings behind creating our consuming based
architecture, which has overwhelmingly conquered the planet. Trying to
understand its power and how this type of architecture is used to
control us and our behavior, our thinking. Also my concern is what kind
of public spaces within the frame of consuming are offered for us. How
are we in them, how these spaces are and what they do.
1.Pounding a Mall
I was told that behind us was a supermarket being built. That
is inside what is left of a cotton factory, which date back a hundred
years or so. I was also told that in this little town called Pori, there
are three shopping centers in one kilometer radius (not to mention
supermarkets), so thinking to myself and others continuing, how is it
possible. How is it possible for one to have customers for all of them,
how is it possible to get a permission to tear apart the old factory
walls for this kind of use, since it has been done (demolishing our
heritage) in Finland since the 60's and seventies at least, bringing
down our history. As a small country, as people wouldn't it be crucially
important to preserve our memory?
Yes, I could see it, the construction site, and feel the
pounding of concrete pillars getting hit into the ground. Such heavy
duty raises questions. Walls of our classroom were trembling. One pound
per second, I looked up the clock on the wall, like a heartbeat. Sweet
metaphor, thousands of grey concrete stumps to hold it all together,
boom. Chaka-boom isn't it heartbeat that synchronizes, resonates, comes
to bring us enjoyment of music, or music of building. A simple monotonic
beat, though. But when you listen to your own heart, the squeaking and
bumping makes you feel nausea. This pounding irritated everybody and the
thought of a new market was making me sick. Wondering this happening,
we got a new perspective, when Yik Chum from Hong Kong told us that, she
had worked in an office and listened to the same kind of sound every
day for three years. Also that in Hong Kong this kind of sound is
constant. She lived upstairs to a mall and it is very common in HK to
build such high buildings, which contain every possible service one can
possibly need in order to live there. Well, we were stunned. How small
Finland seemed and how small it is. It looked like Hong Kong lives in
different time, that is science fiction here in Pori.
To adapt this kind of progress probably is inevitable, one
cannot live in hating it, but one can question. We are the ones they are
for, right? Question mark is that I'm not sure. Users, the customers,
owners of the premises, owners of the land, what is it to use a
building? To build is a practical practice, daily sight in a city.
Cities are being reconstructed, modeled for some purposes in a
democratic or nondemocratic way to sustain our lives. At least in
Finland attempt is to be as democratic as possible. Though it puzzled me
to hear an architect once say that the system is too democratic, making
the decition making avoid any experimental or bold solutions and in the
end everybody mostly follows the same safe patterns. In Finland it is
clear to see this since the old is being removed and cubes have invaded
our land. It is difficult to find which democratic ways are in use when
it comes to constructing, I have my doubts.
One approach to view this dilemma is to see who is building and
what are the main reasons to construct. Quick look tells me behind my
back a supermarket is getting started. Is there a demand for it? Who
investigates the demand, it must have been calculated. Calculated how to
do it, profit architecture? Profit architecture is to get the value out
of us after having built the site. That is the only reason for such
houses to exist, to exploit. In short fascism wrapped in a package with a
smile and sold to us. So in this line of thought, it is not for us. Not
just talking about the supermarket behind me, but of the genre of
malls, supermarkets and shopping centers. There is plenty of reason for
harsh critique. For some, it's a progress that cannot be stopped, that
we live in capitalism to live we have to consume products that malls
easily bring us cheaply. The pounding-like way, how malls are brought to
us is one way to tell there is nothing ordinary citizens can do
somehow. Companies building their empires are huge forces, what comes to
capacity in funds, employees, connections, planning, they are getting
their voice heard in ads etc. The whole idea of a mall is to be an ad
and a container. Malls, as I see them, are shaped for storage, to have
simple routine-like maneuvers practiced, to move with trollies, for the
shopkeeper to bring in huge amounts of goods, to cash out, rip off as
many people as possible in rows like in factory. Interesting article on
the issue on
www.thefunambulist.net # Weaponized architecture///Architecture for profits Optimization:
The Supermarkets' layout (2012). Which sarcastically remarks the evil architect laughing at us when we think we are free.
2.How architecture creates thinking - Ideology and model behind mass consumption
To enjoy a shopping center there is entertainment: cinemas,
cafes, restaurants, carousels, fountains, trees, glass ceilings,
lighting, lots of it, interior design posing pretty or what happens to
be in style, kind of cheap, mostly depending what is sold in the
particular place. We can spend time there looking, buying, dreaming,
seeing people. The main issue bothering me has been and is how this
architecture influences us, our behavior, mental state and health,
thinking, imagining.
How it involves, harasses, puzzles, disturbs, changes our
attitudes or the way we see the world and ourselves. Or in contrary
makes us feel good about ourselves giving inspiration, peace of mind,
maybe healing and protection. I'm asking because pounding up structures
like malls next to each other is a very impressive and aggressive act.
Secondly to lure thousands of people to consume is another gigantic
happening, which like chain reaction has started movements like no
other. I examine the phenomenon as a pedestrian, biker, careful
consumer, artist and a Finn. Also, because I'm concerned.
An interesting case began when in the 1950s scientist Jonas
Salk was working on polio in the basement of a Pittsburgh laboratory.
Work was not proceeding. He left to Italy to rest in a monastery. After
the breakthrough, which led to the vaccine for polio he felt that the
monastery had deeply effected him as a place and as a building. He
invited architect Louis Kahn to design The Salk institute in La Jolla,
in California hoping other scientists would benefit serene surroundings.
Since then in Salk there has been research on how our surroundings
affect feelings and behavior. "In the current issue of
Scientific American Mind, Emily Anthes
describes how ceiling height, colors and other design factors influence
attention and creativity. Scientists are just beginning to address
these questions, in part by studying changes in brain activity as
subjects make their way through virtual reality rooms." "Mose Bar, a
neuroscientist, speculates that our brains are hard-wired to avoid sharp
angles because we read them as dangerous."
This Is Your Brain On Architecture, Michael Cannell,
www.fastcompany.com.
What do these researches have to give to building
new? What comes to being efficient at the place of work and how workers
enjoy working there has a lot of value for employer. Same goes with
were you live. What we see and how we react to it. Do monotonous dull
city architecture depress us, for example. Thing I wonder is Do these
surveys create new points of views or state the obvious just giving a
scientific value, create science fiction, New Age bumbo jumbo or going
back to something that we are losing or have lost in terms of
architecture? Possibly all that.
3.Architect as fascist, or is it him to blame?
In Finland we have a small scale and a short history with
profit architecture, comparing for instance to the United States. In the
US there are already generations who go and see malls of their
childhood, often abandoned huge and empty with parking lots, to remember
what it was like then, how it was better. Would you be nostalgic for a
mall? Maybe I would. For example website
www.deadmalls.com
is filled with pictures of abandoned malls. Companies owning these
not-in-use buildings don't want this kind of publicity, but the site
still exists and it is also quite huge and has a fun side to it.
Documentaries like Malls R us from year 2008 by a Canadian Helene
Klodawsky (trailer in youtube) give a good picture of the involvement of
malls to peoples lives. Of people that have spent a lot of their
leisure time in malls and around them. The idea of a mall has become
something else than what I think of it. Has the bad profit architecture
eventually come up with the same as the bad television, people love
both, but feel guilty for using them. As I see youngsters in Finland
using mall parking spaces to meet friends, skateboard, bike, spray
graffiti, have fun etc., I wonder is it so because they don't have any
or many other places to go to do these things. Conclusion to this is
that options are given and one has to make the best of them, or find and
create alternatives.
What makes malls problematic as public spaces is that they are privately owned. What one owns one also controls. "By
designing this space as an interior area accessible by definite
entrances and supervised by dozens of video cameras and sensors,
corporations were able to minimize the number of undesirables that were
allowed in “their public space”. The design is also oriented in order to
compose a whole interior fantastic world that is supposed to be
perceived as better than the outside reality. This world is safe, clean,
warm, entertaining and attractive; it is always a disappointment to
leave it for the consumer who forgot reality. The main characteristic of
capitalist design is to leave nothing to chance. Indeed chance provokes
uncertainty and uncertainty provides an illegibility that can be
unproductive for Capitalism."
www.thefunambulist.net # POLITICS///
Capitalism's Architecture.
According to this quote, the mental landscape
hyper-controlled public spaces create is oppressive, paranoid and
delusional. Other mental emotional image given is the feeling that
consumer is in charge and cared for, nurtured and given the best chances
and goods available. The customer can feel enjoyment, pleasure of
consuming. "The unreliable, possibly dangerous group of people is kept
outside. The same article
Capitalism's Architecture
tells that the contemporary mall is said to have been invented by The
Austrian-American Victor Gruen in the 1950's. It is supposed that it was
him who thought of the pure capitalist architecture as an element of
urbanism. Firstly shopping malls were intended for the middle class as
the equivalent of old European city centers, a pedestrian place of
gathering and activity. Doing it differently the United States placed
this new kind of public space within the framework of privatized
supervision, security and control."
www.thefunambulist.net # POLITICS///
Capitalism's Architecture. This
is the insides of a mall in short. How about the shells around, cubes
as I call them? Still controlled by cameras, even the thrashes behind
are watched, locked up.
4.I call them space invaders.
There is a field, wasteland or a meadow of some kind,
bushes and it's been there like that for a longer period of time
surrounded by small scale shops and supermarkets. Like in Tampere where I
live, there is Lielahti which is one part of the town where many malls
are situated and are all offering a bit different varieties of goods,
but none of them is for spending time, dwelling. Such malls are in the
center. Shopping centers are booming in Finland. Is it hysteric or just
convenient? Interestingly the biggest malls are not the biggest sellers
according to the statistics in wikipedia on shopping centers in Finland,
20 biggest shopping centers, 2010. On the website of the Finnish
Council of Shopping Centers says that a successful shopping center is
the pounding heart of a community and gives a definition: shopping
center consists of a commercial building in which retail outlets and
services open inwards onto a walkway or concourse. The gross leasable
area is generally at least 5,000 sq. m. Shopping centers have at least
10 retail outlets. A mall has one or more anchor tenants and a number of
key traders as well as other retailers and services. The services may
be either commercial or public. A single trader may not exceed 50% of
the total commercial space. Shopping centers have joint management and
marketing.
www.kauppakeskusyhdistys.fi. Though year 2012 yle.fi reported a decline in building shopping centers in Finland in the next few years.
Finnish real estate company Citycon is a pro-active owner
and long-term developer of it's properties. It is a major owner and
builder of Shopping centers in Finland, elsewhere in Scandinavia and in
the Baltic. They say on their website they take account of environmental
aspects and well-being of the areas surroundings of its retail
properties, which provides solid foundations for the company's success
and growth in the future.
www.citycon.fi.
In the light of having seen and visited many shopping centers anywhere
in Finland and my skepticism I very much would like to see one of their
properties to be what they claim. Very often those interested in
constructing shopping centers are multinational companies to whose
projects investors can invest in.
But there are good news too as Rautalampi municipality
has taken chance and is looking for funders to build wooden 1000 square
meter shopping center, which would focus on locally produced goods such
as local food and organic food.
www.investinfinland.fi/articles/news
(2012). This is a soon hopefully to become a trend, because so far in
Finland the repetition of the same models is a major fault and worry.
Monotonous landscape of blank straight forms, blank colors, cubes with
gigantic are ads rising up to the sky in favor of vast amount of
traffic, exploitative industries and mass consumption. Made consuming
look easy and light and problems like abuse of employees seem far away.
There are projects that have designed different kinds of
malls, for example for a mall to create it’s own energy and
experimenting new kinds of appearances. It is called climate protection
supermarket and one is located in Graz Austria. Also designers have had
emphasis on using sustainable materials and environmentally friendly
economical construction to reduce the life-cycle cost of buildings.
www.archdaily.com.
Critics assume such projects to be only local and exist only to polish
the surface of the big players in the industry. One way or the other
there definitely is a demand and hurry to develop new ways of consuming
and constructing.
