Lessons from Golden Gate Plaza by Jonathan Novak, Director of Design
In-line shopping centers have entered a new, third generation of design that reinvents their modern roots while creating humane architecture. The first generation of in-line shopping centers was the strip mall. Based on late 1960s modernist ideas of flexibility, it sought the ability to put tenants in any location. It had a pure, raw functionalism that made it a successful retail prototype. The second generation began in the 1990s with a post-modernization of the strip mall. New malls promoted kitschy aesthetics designed to humanize the ubiquitous strip. Replicas of traditional motifs such as pediments, cornices, and mansard roofs were deployed to bring articulation back to sterile architecture. This approach, while being a valid critique of the original strip mall, is now seen as disingenuous and lacks authenticity. Today, the third generation of strip mall accepts the post-modern critique of the strip mall while embracing the purity of their original design intent. The hybridization of these ideas, authenticity, and articulation, is the driving idea behind contemporary in-line mall design and remodels today.
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