Tag: victor gruen

• Apple and the Milanese piazza

  

  This past July, the Apple Piazza Liberty opened in Milan. Above is a photo from the opening via Apple. There’s a band playing in the middle of the piazza.

  The store is central to Apple’s vision of transforming its retail locations into “town squares.” And in this case, the store is quite literally an Italian piazza.

  There’s a lot that is interesting about this store and this strategic move, as well as what this could signal about the future retail. (Curbed discusses that here.)

  The urbanists who read this blog will likely lament the privatization of public space. Because at the end of the day, it is a gray area. Can I hang out an Apple Town Square all day and just read a book?

  But at the same time, this is not necessarily a new idea. From the very beginning, the modern shopping mall was intended to be a new kind of town square. Or at least that’s how Victor Gruen saw it.

  However, what is perhaps new is this appropriation of public spaces for the purposes of what is arguably a new kind of retailing experience – one that almost feels paradoxical. 

  In the case of Apple Piazza Liberty, as well as in some of its other town squares, the actual retailing space is mostly hidden. Here it is underground. (How much to rent the basement?)

  And yet, Apple’s presence feels monumental and almost sublime. Glass box, waterfall, and subtle Apple logo sitting in the middle of a beautiful Milanese piazza.

  What a statement.

  Image: Apple

  2018.10.05

• So, what’s a town square?

  Earlier this week, Apple let us know that it is now calling its stores “town squares.” Not surprisingly, this elicited more than a few reactions. The Verge called it a “pretentious farce.” Others called it arrogant. Who is Apple to think that its stores could ever come close to a real town square?

  It also raised important questions around the actual “publicness” of the spaces within our cities. Traditionally, town squares have indeed been public. But our cities are now also filled with many privately owned public spaces (POPS). Most of the time you don’t know the difference. Though sometimes you do. 

  The reality is that there is a longstanding tradition of private retail-oriented spaces trying to simulate the experience of a town square, and certainly of a gathering space. The creator of the modern mall, Victor Gruen, always thought of his “garden courts” as a kind of substitute for traditional urban spaces. This was him trying to nobly urbanize the suburbs.

  What is perhaps unique about Apple’s town square nomenclature is that – beyond simply wanting to be a Starbucks-esque “third place” – they seem to be telling us that they want to usurp the public nucleus away from the proverbial “garden court” and place it in their individual stores. 

  And the reactions we have seen are because that feels far fetched.

  However this plays out, this is a very clear acknowledgement by Apple that in today’s world being a store simply isn’t enough. That’s no longer interesting. Consumers have far easier options at their disposable. You need to give us more of a reason to visit you in your store or, dare I say, your town square.

  2017.09.16

• Gigantic shopping machines

  

  This morning I gave a presentation and participated in a design charrette that was organized by B+H Advance Strategy about the “mall of the future.” (See photo above.) It’s a 2-day event and I was only able to stick around for a few hours in the morning, but I think it’s great that B+H Architects takes the time to research and get a deeper level of understanding in the areas in which they work. Great design demands that.

  The way the charrette was structured was around a handful of future scenarios. The idea being that it’s impossible to accurately predict the future, but it is possible to play out different possible futures to see what you get. I’m looking forward to seeing what the teams ultimately come up with at the end. I would also be really curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

  But before we decide on what malls are going to become in the future, it’s perhaps useful to think about how they got their start. The man largely credited with inventing the fully enclosed mall typology is a man by the name of Victor Gruen. He was a Vienna-born architect who moved to the US in 1938. 

  In the words of Malcolm Gladwell:

  “Fifty years ago, Victor Gruen designed a fully enclosed, introverted, multitiered, double-anchor-tenant shopping complex with a garden court under a skylight—and today virtually every regional shopping center in America is a fully enclosed, introverted, multitiered, double-anchor-tenant complex with a garden court under a skylight. Victor Gruen didn’t design a building; he designed an archetype.”
  

  The most interesting thing about this story though is that Gruen’s initial hope was that the mall would urbanize America’s suburbs. The garden court was supposed to be a kind of town square. And his broader vision included a mix of higher density uses surrounding the perimeter. But in reality the opposite happened: The mall helped to further suburbanize America.

  However, as our malls begin to show their age (or die) and as we relearn to appreciate walkable urban environments, mall landlords are increasingly thinking mixed-use and higher density. And ironically, many of the plans probably don’t look all that dissimilar to Gruen’s original ideas. So maybe one possible future is simply the one that Gruen wanted to create all along.

  Image: Kinetic Commerce

  2017.07.19

• Our urban history in 50 buildings

  At the time of writing this post, it’s still 2015 – at least here in Toronto. But by the time you (subscribers) get this post in your inbox, it will be 2016. So happy new year! I am thrilled about getting this year started and I hope you feel the same way.

  To kick things off, I thought I would share a great interactive post from Guardian Cities called, A history of cities in 50 buildings. It’s a look at our urban history through 50 important and pivotal buildings. Buildings such as Southdale Center, which was the first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping mall, and Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, which was a building that really set the stage for the modern skyscraper that we know today.

  Not all of these buildings have left a positive legacy on our cities. I am sure that some of you would argue that the creation of the suburban shopping mall, with its corresponding “sea of parking”, was not a step forward for cities, but a step backwards. The architect behind Southdale Center, Victor Gruen, has even gone on record saying that he refuses “to pay alimony for those bastard developments.” He hated the shopping mall.

  But like them or not, these buildings are part of our urban history, and I think it’s not only interesting but important to understand their impacts. If you want to see which important buildings were missed, at least according to Guardian readers, click here. I have to say that I was happy to see both Montréal and Toronto represented in the original list, as well as a few other buildings that I’ve written about here.

  On that note, happy new year to you all, again, and many thanks for reading Architect This City. If you have any suggestions for content you would like to see on this blog in 2016, please leave it in the comment section below. This may be my personal blog, but my goal is to make it valuable for all of you. Hopefully I achieve that sometimes.

  2016.01.01