An Evolution of the Shopping-malls Architecture since 1970-s

In the second part of the XX century there has been a mall upheaval in America. In the 1970s the architects created new methods of communications with the customers through changing the established plan of the mall, that was introduced by Victor Gruen in 1950s, and widely implemented for all the shopping centers. This was a new wave of commercial buildings that have also influenced people’s social life. Recent studies on American shopping malls tend to be limited as most of the research evaluate this topic mostly through the social and economic point of view and tend to pay less or no attention to the architecture, especially the planing system that changed every decade since 1970s. This work discusses the methods of formation of commercial architecture basing on a wide range of shopping malls of America since the 1970s to 1990s. The purpose of this study is to identify the methods and to track the development of the shopping malls in the USA as most the of the changes tend to be cyclic and repeat the earlier prototypes of the commercial space such as arcades. The research will display how did the mall planning system changed and formulated own architectural language depending on the economic and social aspects and accomplished into mixed-used malls that offered the whole spectrum of entertainments by 1990s.