Decades ago, Americans went to Main Street to shop. A series of small mom-and-pop shops stood side by side along a tree-lined block or two, displaying their wares through large, inviting windows.
Then, In 1956 something happened that changed this shopping experience forever. A new form of retail brought together the hustle and bustle of Main Street commerce and recreated it within a large cubic building that – on purpose – it had no windows.
“Windowless” shopping
The birth of the American shopping mall marked the beginning of a “Windowless” shopping season which largely still exists. The strategy was clever and the small details of the design – from the shoeless box architecture to the potted plants – were carefully considered. These were cost-saving measures for shopping center managers, which were also designed to influence shopping center visitors to spend freely. O artificially bright artificial lighting sought to create a perpetual daytime environment. Therefore, mall visitors stayed longer than expected and spent more than they wanted.
Another reason malls avoided storefronts actually had to do with merchandise, Burt Flickinger, a retail expert and managing director at retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group, told CNN.
Fewer windows and more walls, he said, means more space for retailers to add shelves and bars to store their products and maximize sales per square foot in their stores, which would otherwise be lost due to the drab parking lot view. of a shopping center.
But the most insidious reason malls limit window displays may be to make shoppers lose track of time.
“Buyers can’t see rain or blizzard without windows. Windowless shopping creates a distraction-free shopping environment,” said Flickinger. “When people feel a sense of timelessness and comfort, families spend more money because they can focus solely on the stores and the mall experience.”
Shock and amazement inside
The first fully enclosed shopping center – the Southdale Center in Minneapolis – opened in 1956. It became the prototype for what followed, as climate-controlled indoor shopping centers that could remain open year-round popped up in suburbs across the country. .
The architect of the 1.2 million square meter Southdale Center was Austrian-born Victor Gruen, considered a pioneer in modern shopping center design. He founded Gruen Associates, a still-existing architecture, design and landscaping firm based in Los Angeles.
He wanted to impress customers with something shocking and awe-inspiring as soon as they entered the building and saw the brightly lit shops and cafes and even the artwork displayed around the mall.
At the center of the mall’s layout would be a fountain or skylight, possibly the only entry point for natural light to enter the large space. Add plants and music to create a welcoming sensory experience.
The traditional mall structure was T-shaped or cross-shaped with four central stores on each side, Stephanie Cegielski, vice president of research at the International Council of Shopping Centers, told CNN.
“When you walk that ‘T,’ everything is facing you. As a buyer, you are constantly looking at what’s next and in contrast to what’s happening in the outside world,” she said.
Because all activity is inward-facing, Cegielski said it didn’t make sense to have windows per se, “unless it’s a department store that has its own separate entrance to the mall, which would create that window to the outside,” he said. he. .
The outside was another story. The Southdale Mall was functional and drab in appearance and this is the design that all traditional indoor malls continued to follow. “Shopping malls are really built to have the landscape inside. All the architectural energy that we normally see on the exterior of a building in an urban environment is concentrated inside. A mall is a vending machine,” Alexandra Lange, architecture critic and author of “Meet me by the Fountain: An Inside Story of the Mall,” told CNN in an interview.
Fewer windows mean lower energy bills
As an added bonus, “it was much cheaper for mall developers not to put in too many outward-facing windows because it would be cheaper to heat and cool the large store space,” said Thomas McMillan, director of the Center. of Retail Studies at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, in an interview with CNN.
Energy costs are typically the second largest operating cost for retailers, after labor costs. “The sophistication of energy-efficient double-paned windows was not ubiquitous when many shopping centers were built in the United States during and after the energy crisis of the 1970s. Therefore, conditioned air could leak through the window panes,” he said.
Source: CNN