Meet me by the fountain : an inside history of the mall / Alexandra Lange.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022Copyright date: ©2022Description: 310 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cmContent type: - text
- still image
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781635576023
- 1635576024
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 381.11 L274 | Available | 33111010848709 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards
"A smart and accessible cultural history."- Los Angeles Times
"A fantastic examination of what became the mall ... envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers."- Vulture
A portrait--by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving--of one of America's most iconic institutions, from an author who "might be the most influential design critic writing now" (LARB).
Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?
In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood , Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.
Introduction: Why we go to the mall -- Every day will be a perfect shopping day -- The garden -- The mall and the public -- Make shopping beside the point -- Whose mall is it anyway? -- Dawn of the Dead mall -- The postapocalyptic mall -- Conclusion: The mall abroad.
An entertaining and evocative stroll through the rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention of malls, which proved to be a powerful draw for creative thinkers including Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, chronicles how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in cultural ascent.
Since their birth in the 1950s, malls have been temples of commerce. Amid the aftershocks of financial crises, a global pandemic, and the rise of online retail, abandoned shopping centers have become one of our era's defining images. Lange chronicles the postwar invention of the mall, and shows how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in the cultural ascent. She shows that they are environments of both freedom and exclusion, of consumerism but also of community. -- adapted from jacket
Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-297) and index.