The Holy Trinity of Modernity: Leisure, Suburbia and the Shopping Centre

Writing about leisure in suburbia would be neigh impossible without including shopping centres. Leisure, suburbia and shopping centres might well embody the holy trinity of capitalist modernity. It was the consolidation of capitalism that established our modern sense of work, free time and leisure, and the shopping centre became its temple; a...

Collectivity and the Post-war European Shopping Centre

This paper puts forth the hypothesis that notions such as ‘collectivity’, ‘play’ and ‘community’ – buzz words of the post-war discourse on architecture and urbanism – were often important elements in the design and conceptualization of post-war shopping centres in Western Europe. To investigate this hypothesis, the paper focuses on three...

Campsites as utopias? A socio-spatial reading of the post-war holiday camp in Belgium, 1950s to 1970s

This paper contrasts the objectives that underlie the development of government-funded holiday camps for family vacations in Belgium with the socio-spatial practices of their initial users. Drawing on oral history, archival material, photographs and site plans, we argue that holidaymakers did not just experience the holiday camp as an...