The mall is dead. Long live the mall. The historic mall has descended into the tomb, and the land is vacant. As speculation on the mall’s future increases, an opportunity to take advantage of the chaos has arisen. The historic mall—a series of spaces connected by a spinal, air-conditioned corridor has engineered thought out of the equation. Travel east to west, north to south, in a circle—the diagram of the mall is simplistic, pacifying perfection at best. Air conditioning equalizes environments and negates the sense of place. Commonplace as well as aggressive, it removes experience and replaces it with placation.
The mall mollifies. Malls are no longer destinations by themselves; isolated from context by great walls of asphalt that rise minimally from the ground. The future mall must attract activity and commerce internally while also sustaining and enhancing the community externally. Stagnate parking fields deflect interaction. Instigate the edge condition by creating new walls. Inhabit the walls with business, community, and circumstance. Within the walls, the previous linear mall structure has separated and become cellular. Create the possibility of choice and accident by incorporating the interstitial. There is no corridor. No predestined path of up and down. This introduction of choice is antithetic to the current suburb and anthemic to the historic market.