Transformation of Shopping Mall Planning from 'The True Character of Things'

Abstract

The mall, the commercial space that has existed since the mid-20th century, revealed an axis of transformation with the flow of time, and was a process of transformation from the centripetal to the centrifugal, parallel, and complex types. In other words, there was the initial phase from the enclosed centripetal malls planned by Gruen, to the open centrifugal malls with a shallow depth of space, followed by the process of transformation into juxtaposition and complex types with deeper space than open malls, and the characters of both open and enclosed malls in one space. This series of transformations shares similarities with the Roman forum, a historical commercial space, and this study discusses the process of transformation commonly found in the malls and in the Roman forums based on the concept of the true character of things of Karl Popper. Furthermore, the two-step concept of setting-into-work of Christian Norberg-Schulz was applied to clarify the meaning of transformation of malls.