Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate

this is the American dream Mall the dream was turned into reality by the same developers that brought us the iconic Mall of America in Minnesota but this one is located in New Jersey and it took 16 years and 5 billion dollars to build the structure is 3 million square feet or 279 000 square meters in area to put that into perspective here's the same area mapped onto Chicago that's 25 square blocks from Michigan Avenue to LaSalle and Jackson up to Randolph inside these spaces are stores of course 500 of them as well as Nickelodeon themed amusement parks and water parks and indoor ice rink and an indoor ski resort it's called big snow and it's the first indoor ski park in North America a two-hour ticket costs 50 bucks but you can watch a live feed of the excitement on bigsnowamericandream.com the 160 foot vertical slope or 16 story tall structure pops up precariously from the surrounding concrete parking garages has set atop its slender steel stilts you can ski as four acres of runs on real snow year-round and total that's 5 500 tons of snow packed two feet thick they use twelve thousand pounds no cat to groom the slopes it had to be delivered by Crane and hoisted into place the machine roams the slopes running on clean diesel which is supposedly efficient enough to operate inside without creating too much of a health hazard everything in here is engineered to look and act as authentically as possible to give visitors a replica experience of skiing on a natural Mountain the space is climate controlled to a consistent 28 degrees Fahrenheit or minus two degrees Celsius using heavy duty chillers the building draws so much energy that the local infrastructure had to be upgraded to be able to accommodate it the American dream Mall opened in 2019 directly into the pandemic its Financial struggles are the stuff of Legend and serve as a cautionary tale within the larger narrative that's around the decline of shopping malls and maybe even the decline of suburbs in general as a Hail Mary last-ditch effort the design pulls out all the stops to create a successful mall going experience it represents the last gasp along a journey called Disney Vacation the commercial transformation of things I.E entertainment or environments into something simplified controlled and safe reminiscent of the Walt Disney brand also in this case it includes heightening the spectacle of the mall going experience by importing theme park-like attractions when malls were first conceived shopping was enough to draw people together within a miniature City inside of a building the mall was a place where people could have authentic seeming public interactions in a Suburban environment as not so conducive to meeting in public otherwise I don't want to go into the entire history of malls here there are plenty of good videos on the subject I'll just link to one above rather what I find fascinating or how Maul's developed expert levels of control and heightened levels of artificiality masquerading as nature as a means of increasing sales big snow is an obviously exaggerated version of this Fang Mountain inside of a building but the mall is actually saturated with all sorts of fake Natures there to enhance the experience some of these are so good that you never even noticed that they were there this all might seem obvious like of course there's a certain level of artificiality inside of any indoor environment but as malls are dying they're getting ever more Savvy in order to survive and they're looking to increasingly sophisticated methods for creating artificial environments that operate on us unsuspecting Shoppers and the targeted attention paid to Nature isn't innocent [Music] being an Old Orchard Mall kind of reminded me of being home in Africa by the watering hole in the movie Mean Girls Katie had spent the last 12 years living in Africa which means she's experiencing Teenage life in the northern suburbs of Chicago with a heightened level of observational skills by the way they claim to be at the Old Orchard Mall in Skokie Illinois but this is the real version which isn't quite so photogenic but the fountain has a Saharan watering hole isn't too distant a metaphor pounds have all sorts of documented climactic and psychological effects on those that encounter them for more about fountains check out this video on their history in the urban environment of Chicago in one study cancer patients were shown a video of waterfalls creeks and ocean waves these patients who were in chronic pain experienced 20 to 30 percent reduction in the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine exposure to Nature kicks off all sorts of physiological reactions into gear most of which were not in full control of the American dream Mall's architect The Firm Gensler also did a study of malls and noted that biophilic design principles are trending up in shopping mall design integrated green spaces encourage better mental health and well-being by promoting more human reconnection with nature the result is a design that is better received by the public and the natural environment while this shows up in obvious ways it also comes out in some pretty curious practices as well for instance we left off the conversation about big snow talking about the control of its air of course all malls are air-conditioned meaning there are temperature and humidity controlled but did you know that the scent of shopping mall air is also designed and controlled obviously it smells delicious walking next to a Cinnabon or a popcorn store and I do know they use fans to artificially spread these smells but that's not what I'm really talking about companies like scent air are dedicated to producing scents to heighten the retail experience they have dozens of cents to choose from including natural sources like Pinewood Forest and island Breeze but they've also worked with food brands like Cold Stone Creamery to generate artificial scents that will make your space smell like ice cream such as apple pie a la Cold Stone they claim that the use of their sense inside of a store can actually improve customer satisfaction by up to 20 percent earn up to nine percent more in sales revenue and increase store linger time up to 18 percent the chemical concoctions are typically deployed within diffusers which can either be Standalone units or attached to the general hva system of a space the center Air Stream diffuser for instance works for spaces that are larger than 3000 square feet you know who else is in the retail Cent game a company called Mood Media they have over 1600 cents to choose from for pumping into retail spaces but Mood Media does more than just manufacture sense for the air you breathe they provide resources for all sorts of atmospheric manipulations you may have heard of a company that they acquired a few years ago called music they Supply an endless stream and variety of sounds for retail spaces to tickle your ears while you shop these sounds are meant to be heard unconsciously draw enough attention to hook you with their effects but not enough though that you notice Professor Gary Gumpert said about music it's a kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us it never startles us it is never too loud it is never too silent it is always there the concept of background music owes much of its development to French composer Eric Satie his Piece furniture music was meant to be played as if it did not exist to be construed as a facet of the environment and no more by the 1940s buffeted by research indicating that music had a physiological influence upon Behavior musac introduced the stimulus progression 15-minute stretches of background instrumentals that are meant to give the listeners a boost to productivity over the course of an hour muzak's Engineers restyled themselves as audio Architects crafting Sonic atmospherics for retail environments that were intended to dramatically offset the store from the surrounding area inducting the customer into a way of life for the duration of their stay in the store in say Mall of America every single space is hardwired for sound and there are three main speaker systems these don't all just play music either the hallway speakers do like music but the ones beneath the tree foliage play sounds of nature like Cricket singing music built on this concept and found a niche delivering recorded music through hidden speakers and Retail environments music were so often hidden among large potted plants that people called it potted Palm music speaking of trees those are usually fake in a mall too a company called nature maker makes products called steel art trees they claim that each handmade tree is a bold synthesis of art masterful engineering and original arboreal sculpture life-size and true to scale each tree perfectly captures the nuances of silhouette trunk Branch bark and limb structure certified welders create the underlying structure of the approved design and nature Maker's proprietary Arbor real texture and foliage is applied and hand-painted by Artisans each tree is then disassembled shipped and reassembled on site the vagueness continues on the floors of epoxy made to look like stone or even extend to the ceiling with LED lighting fixtures that mimic daylight to make you feel Outdoors like in the painted ceiling of the Villagio Mall in Cotter but all of this artificially composed and constructed nature goes to operating on our human nature of course malls serve our desires to accumulate material objects and increasingly to provide meaningful experiences but this too is highly constructed practices like geofencing track the movement of people through the mall to study their locations and to serve them targeted ads and notifications on their phones this data is then used to understand behavior and leads to more refined practices for keeping customers engaged the architect REM Cole Haas and a team of students studied shopping closely and compiled their findings in a book that was called the Harvard guide for shopping in it they called them all an ecology and in fact found that Concepts and mechanisms of ecology provide very accurate models for understanding the shopping mall it's like the survival of the fittest the behavior of forms and malls is similar to laws of ecology patches of soft cores and tentacles part of the theory is that both zones and malls and things like living cells or ecosystems are driven by having perimeters that are receptive to interaction kulhas believes this explains the crazy shapes that we find in malls better than any other architectural or Urban Design theories interestingly the mall's origin is traced to the architect and developer Victor Gruen that wanted to import the positive aspects of public life of an Urban Plaza into the suburbs to bring a piece of the city into sprawling and manicured nature-soaked suburbs for him the courtyard covered by a skylight was actually modeled after European arcades that had flourished in Vienna and other cities in the early 19th century Gruen called this the Garden Court of Perpetual spring people could break from the shopping to enjoy sculptures carnivals cafes nature Etc and any season of the year this became a Hallmark of shopping mall architecture that you could have trees inside or a goldfish Pond or an Aviary or a Garden Cafe all this was meant to be in service to providing public urban life to suburbanites it's interesting to me that the place that already has an abundance of artificial nature composed of mowed lawns and trimmed Hedges needed even more in order to provide the kinds of spaces that cities have naturally but we all know that the mall didn't end up providing the kind of public space that Gruen was seeking instead the mall is a building type is dying and Disney vacation is trying to keep the last two alive complete with ever more extremes of artificial Natures even Victor grew and disavowed his invention later in life two years before his passing he declared I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments they destroyed our cities and so today we get malls like the American dream mall or Villagio Mall in Cotter which is famous for its 150 meter indoor Canal based on an Italian Hill town and complete with gondolas they have the power to take us anywhere from anywhere like a virtual transporter the artificial Natures of malls with fake plants and trees may look nice but they don't offer any of the ecological benefits of real plants they don't provide oxygen they don't support biodiversity and they don't help improve the air quality in fact some fake plants and trees are even made from materials that can be harmful to the environment so next time you're at the mall take a moment to appreciate the fake nature around you but also consider the overall impact that it might be having on the actual environment outside when you give to 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Channel: Stewart Hicks

Views: 1,008,980

Keywords: architecture, design, architecture student, architecture design, architecture lecture for beginners, architecture 101, architecture documentary, architecture concept, architecture theory, stewart hicks, architecture talk, urban design, chicago

Id: 9zzcRySDl8o

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2022