Condensed Architecture

“Part real estate, part entertainment venture, urban entertainment centers are a novel development product that will soon make an appearance in cities across the United States.” Rubin 59
”means of revitalizing downtown retail and cultural areas and as a strategy for bringing residents of the region into the city for shopping, eating, and recreating.” Rubin 60

Ultimately, what do people want?
It seems that they want everything in a smaller and smaller and closer and closer space.
People want “a blend of retail, food and beverage, and entertainment options that can achieve a higher performance profile than these first-generation festival marketplaces or themed retail projects.” Rubin 62

But what does this mean for architecture? Before this concept of the mall became so popular, architecture was about a series of small interior spaces scattered across a large exterior space. The drive toward Urban Entertainment Center’s and large urban centers in general is what created our current architectural situation in which we now have that same series of small interior spaces but compacted into another, slightly larger, interior space. Space is being condensed. Architecture is condensing.

On page 9 of Wolf’s “”You are now entering the Entertainment Zone” he argues that movies in multiplexes having multiple showings make it more of a destination. I strongly disagree. I was recently speaking to the developers of the Westcott Cinema renovation on Westcott Street in Syracuse and they talked about how previous film showings in the theater, there would be an average of 6 people a night over a course of 6 weeks seeing a movie. But, if they made one night only they would sell out and it becomes more of an event. I have to agree with this; if you make something into an event and there is limited time to see it, the audience feels as if they must see it when it’s out! But if something is always playing, you keep telling yourself, “ow, I’ll go next week” until it’s not in the theater anymore and then you say, “well, it’ll be out on DVD in a few weeks so I’ll just rent it”, and then you don’t rent it, but instead stumble upon it a few months later, or less, after its release on cable and say, “oh, I really wanted to see that” and so you finally watch it. Just in my lifetime I have seen films go from taking nearly 1-2 years to go from the theater to the video store and now some movies are still in the theater when the movie is being release in video stores. Because entertainment can be accessed closer and closer to the individual and less and less movement and interaction needs to happen the individual is not going out. The novelty of seeing a movie on the big screen has lost all effect, because now, it seems that the benefits of home theater out weigh those of public theater. The quality at home is better, you can watch when you want, and you can pause and rewind at any moment and now we live in a society of people who use DVR and Pay-Per-View.

My point is that Wolf’s argument for the mega-mall is precisely mine against it. I think the true part of the megamall is more what Rubin, Gorman and Lawry were saying about having multiple amenities in one location. That is the benefit people are seeking by going to UEC’s. It is not quite about novelty anymore, especially when the same chain stores appear in every mall. It is more about the convenience of everything under one roof and I think most places realize that, because they are capitalizing not solely on forgotten novelty items but rather on new novelties surrounded by reassuring stores in one convenient location. Wolf finally gets at the point when he mentions the aspect of the recreation of the small town. People want to revert back to the small town, but now it is on the scale of suburbia.