Black Friday at the Agora
A Story of Retail Architecture and Capitalism
M.L.E. White (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Phoebus I. Panigyrakis – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / A)
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Abstract
This essay contextualises and analyses the development of shopping centres in the 20th century by their connection to postmodernism and capitalism, through Frederic Jameson’s theories on the advent of the architectural style and cultural movement, positioning the act of shopping as a cultural production of the economic system. Using Jameson's tools for the interpretation of postmodern creations, a connection can be established between the architectural designs of shopping centres and the cultural productions of capitalism, identifying traits of depthlessness, pastiche, subject fragmentation, liminal space, mechanised circulation, and the waning of affect in case studies of shopping malls in The Netherlands.
The case studies include the ‘Passage’ in The Hague (1885 to compare neoclassical and contemporary juxtapositions, the ‘Lijnbaan’ in Rotterdam (1953) as an example of Modernist space, the ‘Heuvel’ in Eindhoven (1992) as an example of postmodern planning, and ‘Westfield Mall of the Netherlands’ in The Hague (2017) as example of sustainability themed mega malls. These examples provide a timeline for the evolution of shopping malls in the 20th century, but more importantly as physical illustrations for the relationship between architectural theories on shopping and the cultural production of Postmodern space.