Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
There are examples of reuse. But they aren't necessarily easy or cheap, and they're often not terribly desirable places regardless.
For one, the existing buildings are often more expensive to retrofit than to replace. They tend to be built to the dimensions of department stores, small stores, common areas, and loading docks, very little of which matches what most tenants want. Depending on the construction type, it might be very difficult to open up a department store with windows for example. The massive floorplates are a challenge. In a multi-level store the floor-to-floor heights can add some challenge in HVAC and the ease of unfit people using stairs. Subdividing can have extra challenges in giant spaces.
A food court requires many thousands of people to cycle through per day. Most adaptive reuse concepts involve far fewer people, plus they tend to be bunched around the mealtimes for those uses, and only five days per week. It could work but only in select cases.
Malls tend to be built for short lifetimes. The bones might last but the finishes don't. I'm not sure there's much to save.
And frankly, I won't root for this to be a trend. Let's say you keep the main mall building with other uses (offices etc.) and put housing, offices, and garages on the rest. Do you want outdoor retail, like real streets? Or do you want to get everyone inside the mall? Let's say you have 2,000 apartments (3,000 people) and 500,000 sf of office (2,500 people. Those aren't going to sustain much restaurant or takeout traffic, so it's probably an either/or on where you want most people to go.
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I understand what you are saying. Maybe instead of preserving the throwaway building structure of mall or its awkward layout, what we should be preserving are any remaining bits and pieces of interior fixtures that are of architectural or artistic merit that can still be scavenged. The clock is seriously ticking on this, in 5-10 years this might be impossible. I'm talking about stuff such as murals, ceiling tapestries and mobiles, light fixtures, metal doors, fountain components when practical, entryway arches, large sculptural objects, abstract signage, big fake clocks, cool kiosks, decorative metal lattices, etc, etc. Then employ those, or recreations, in new developments utilizing the dead mall's massive former footprint which harken back to some of the ideals of planners who came up with the mall in the first place.
I guess the two traits of malls I actually care about are:
1. Interesting postmodern architecture flair and the "aesthetic" that I see becoming popular again in other forms is worthy of preservation in at least some instances. I acknowledge that the vast majority of malls in this country were either never that distinct and/or they have been renovated so many times their interiors have been reduced to utter blandness. Or they got so run down you can't do anything about it. But a few cool ones are still around and they are being knocked down at a fast rate and it sucks.
2. While I love traditional urbanism and like our downtown, I've come to realize living in Houston that maybe our ideal built environment shouldn't just blindly mimic the East Coast or Midwest. The heat and humidity make closed in streets with lots of dark colored bricks and hardscapes uncomfortably warm and kill the breeze and everything gets skanky. Especially near bars. Malls as I remember them growing up, with their cold tile and AC and the blast of air that smells interesting(was it in the bromine in the fountain water? probably very unhealthy and illegal now) sounds kind of good right now. But I realize it can't come back, per se.
In a new mixed use development utilizing the giant site of a dead mall that's been torn down, make the public square area more breezy with cooler lighter colors(grays, aqua, etc), and use the bits you took from the old mall before you knocked it down. Then while you keep an outdoor area, have an interior glass arcade with AC. Respect the concept of the old mall in your design but don't recreate it. What would be awesome is if we as a city, or any city, could come together and decide to cluster together various civic institutions like museums, new style libraries that are more about hands on stuff, recreation, education, etc in these spots. So it would have anchors that would make it a destination.
TLDR: I wish there were public spaces to go when its' 9000 degrees outside that are meant for everyone and not just a few people who live in gentrified neighborhoods, and said public spaces should also reflect our real, genuine architectural heritage.
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