A Distant Center

What’s a mall with no center? Does the volume of information emanating from the hub distort its responsibility as an agent of re-centering? Is the location of the center really a means of reorientation, or have we simply become so accustomed to the paradigm of the cruciform mall that we are unable to associate that kind of center with anything but, perhaps, the food court? More and more, a mall’s center is capable, through carefully-aimed visual, olfactory, and auditory barrage, of doing far more harm than it does good with regard to its responsibility to re-center on a cosmic level. Sure, the shape itself implies a kind of order and rightness, but what happens when we are unable to physically occupy the center of an atrium space – on an upper level, for example, all we can do is observe the contents of the center. The only remaining central space to occupy is the ground floor, which, for most of the year, is annexed by the mall in an attempt to create a new focal point – not the nothingness or sacred space as such a sublime form might dictate, but a spot for BIG THINGS – the space of the mall, once held as sacred by Gruen and only experienced when the need for things was strangely absent (after Southdale had closed its doors for the night), has been undermined in favor of giant Christmas trees and dangling gift boxes. The center has become, well, the only place to fit the Christmas tree.