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Shopping malls aren’t just places to shop–they’re carefully designed environments built to influence how you think, move, and spend. Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD to break down the hidden design strategies behind modern shopping malls using the ‘Gruen Transfer’, escalator placement, skylights, maze-like layouts, and more. From the first enclosed mall in Minnesota to the Mall of America and Las Vegas mega-malls, learn how malls evolved from European public plazas into powerful tools of consumer psychology.
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00:00The American shopping mall.
00:01The escalators, the fountains, the food court.
00:04At the mall, you can get your ears pierced, eat a giant pretzel, entertain your kids,
00:09and do your holiday shopping, all in a single trip.
00:12It can be a little overwhelming.
00:13And that's actually by design.
00:15The mall is specifically designed to make you spend more time and more money than you
00:21mean to, without even realizing it.
00:23And what may be most surprising is that these design ideas actually come from classical
00:28European plazas, dating back thousands of years.
00:31I'm Michael Weissner, and I've been an architect for over 35 years.
00:34And today we're breaking down how shopping malls are designed to influence your behavior.
00:41So why is it called the mall?
00:42The term mall comes from a 17th century mallet and ball game called Paul Mall.
00:47That was like a cross between croquet and golf.
00:50And it was played on an alley-shaped court that was called a mall.
00:54In fact, the popular shopping and entertainment street in London, Paul Mall, was actually first
00:59built as a court for nobility to play this game, but was eventually converted to a street.
01:04Because of this game, many wide paths or streets lined by trees came to be referred to as malls,
01:10like the mall in New York Central Park, for example.
01:12Fast forward to today, and modern shopping malls have replaced the trees with stores and
01:17replaced the game with shopping.
01:19But the basic shape remains.
01:20But nearly every other thing you find inside the mall is directly inspired by European
01:25plazas.
01:26So this is the Southdale Center shopping mall in Edina, Minnesota.
01:30This mall in Edina was the first modern enclosed shopping mall in the United States.
01:36So looking at this image, first you can see it's one giant building under one giant roof.
01:42Secondly, there's two anchor stores.
01:45One is called Dayton's, one is called Donaldson's.
01:47And those two anchor stores are set up in what we call a dumbbell plan.
01:52And they're connected with smaller shops and restaurants between them.
01:56And typically, that's the most common layout you see in malls today.
02:00And the reason for that is that people would pass from one anchor store to the other anchor store,
02:05and they'd have to pass by all the smaller shops in between.
02:10But you'll also see a Cartesian and a cluster design.
02:12And we'll get into those a bit later.
02:14The other thing you can see is that it's surrounded by all this parking.
02:18This was designed by Victor Gruen, and these cars are actually what inspired Victor Gruen to design
02:22them all the way he did.
02:32Gruen was born in Vienna, Austria, and was accepted to the same art school that rejected Adolf Hitler.
02:38Later, Gruen emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis.
02:41And although he fled Europe, he fondly remembered the culture of pedestrian public life in Vienna,
02:47and was outspoken in his dislike of the car-focused suburbs of the United States.
02:51He saw cars as isolating and a threat to the idea of a social community.
02:56His vision was to create a gathering place where people would get out of their cars
03:00and spend time together as a community.
03:02In essence, a sort of public plaza reinvented by the suburbs.
03:06And although before this, there had been other versions of covered shopping arcades in the US,
03:10like the arcade in Cleveland nicknamed the Crystal Palace of America.
03:14This mall in Edina was the first modern enclosed shopping mall in the United States.
03:20American malls, of course, are not always fully enclosed.
03:23And in fact, Gruen and other notable architects like I.M. Pei and Renzo Piano have designed malls
03:27across America that are open air.
03:29But to become true commercial giants, shopping malls needed to be able to support lots of shoppers
03:35all year round, not just when the weather was good.
03:37And what makes this huge enclosed space possible is actually the advent of air conditioning.
03:44And that's part of what made this mall in Minnesota so special.
03:48Once the mall became fully enclosed, that's when Gruen's design ideas evolved into an economic
03:54and psychological principle known as the Gruen Transfer.
03:59So let's take a look at the interior.
04:01So this is what jumps out at me.
04:03First off, there's no windows.
04:05All the natural light comes from above so that you can see directly outside.
04:09Secondly, he brings you up to the second level via these escalators.
04:13And he fills it with plants and a fountain.
04:16There are seating areas.
04:17And the other thing he does is he takes the storefronts and he turns them inboard.
04:23And so instead of the stores facing out toward the street, now they're facing in towards the main space.
04:30It eliminated the barrier between the storefront and the outside.
04:34There's no door that you have to open anymore.
04:36The storefronts are completely open and people can flow in and out without any friction.
04:41And so the shape of it is very much like a public plaza, which is very evident in the plan
04:47layout.
04:48So that dumbbell layout is quite evident here in that these two anchor stores, Dayton's and Donaldson's,
04:54are the two ends of the dumbbell.
04:56And then connecting between them are the smaller shops and stores that are surrounding this plaza.
05:02So when you're in this central plaza, instead of looking out to windows, you're looking into stores.
05:08So you can see that funny shape of the fountain, which is right here.
05:11And you can see the escalators beyond, which are right here and here that lead up to this bridge and
05:19the second floor.
05:20Even when you're on the second floor, you're still part of the main space.
05:24So if you were to remove the roof, this would look like almost any public plaza you would see in
05:29Europe.
05:30It would end up looking a lot like this space.
05:33There's a fountain and there's a fountain here.
05:35And there's this arcade along the sides.
05:38And there's an arcade along here and along here.
05:41There's an escalator that goes up.
05:42There's a stair that goes up here.
05:44The facades of these buildings are essentially the facades of the storefronts that are inside the plaza.
05:51And they've even got the grid on the floor, as you would see here and here.
05:56And similar to European Plaza, there's a lot of areas for just sitting and talking.
06:01Gruen envisioned these shopping malls as places that were imitating what was happening in the European plazas of his youth.
06:10This great social community gathering place.
06:13Where people talk and people shop and people eat and people gather.
06:18And it all happened as they were going around their daily lives.
06:22So from this ancient idea came the idea that the mall is this singular enclosed building in which you could
06:27buy everything you needed.
06:28So if someone came in the morning, they could buy clothes and toys and gifts.
06:34They could stop for lunch and then buy their gardening tools and cleaning supplies and groceries on their way out.
06:40Then they would have been there the whole day around other people with the opportunity for spontaneous interaction with neighbors
06:46and shopkeepers.
06:47In that way the mall was designed to be a cultural hub and it was very successful.
06:52But the unintended consequence of this design, at least from Gruen's perspective, is the psychological phenomenon.
06:58Which would later be described by retailers as the Gruen transfer.
07:02So the Gruen transfer is a psychological effect.
07:05Where a shopper plans to buy one thing but becomes disoriented and distracted by the many options in front of
07:12them.
07:12Causing them to buy other things they weren't planning to.
07:15The transfer part is what happens when the shopper transfers their focus from need to desire.
07:21And the effect is amplified the more time that someone spends at the mall.
07:25So the key elements of the Gruen transfer are one, an overwhelming amount of choice.
07:30And two, a pleasant environment that makes you want to linger.
07:34Retailers learned that when you combine these elements, shoppers spend more money than they intended to.
07:40In fact, Joan Didion tells this great story that she went into a mall in Honolulu to buy a newspaper
07:45and came out with three hats, some flowers and a toaster.
07:49It's the idea of an impulse buy.
07:51This idea has become so popular in the design of retail spaces that you see it adopted in individual stores
07:57like IKEA.
07:58Which leads you on a winding path past every item in the store before you can leave.
08:02It also happens at airports which have incorporated malls in between check-in and the gate.
08:07Forcing you past a dizzying array of shopping opportunities while you wait for your flight.
08:11Some people say that airports are now nothing but shopping malls where planes happen to take off and land.
08:16And you even see this idea in amusement parks.
08:18In fact, Walt Disney was inspired to include elements of mall design in his plans for Epcot in Florida after
08:26touring Midtown Plaza Mall in Rochester, New York.
08:29Also designed by Victor Gruen.
08:31And although this psychological effect is named for Victor Gruen, he always maintained that his design was focused on community
08:38and the human experience.
08:39And the idea of getting people out of their cars.
08:41And he rejected the notion that malls should cynically and intentionally manipulate people using this idea.
08:47He saw other malls that used design to maximize profits as a bastardization of his intentions.
08:54Even saying, quote, I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments.
08:59Of course, despite Gruen's outspoken opposition, malls are first and foremost built to make money.
09:05And so future malls would try to maximize the Gruen transfer in their designs.
09:10And one of the most successful examples of this is the Mall of America, also in Minnesota.
09:15So this is the largest mall in America.
09:18And it's 5.6 million square feet.
09:21Which basically means you could fit 97 football fields or seven Yankee stadiums inside of it.
09:27At the center of it is a seven-acre theme park.
09:30It has 520 stores, 60 restaurants, and an aquarium.
09:34It's so big that it has its own zip code.
09:36So even though this building is colossal in size, you still see a lot of Gruen's original ideas.
09:42The bridge going across the top.
09:45The stores lining on the sides, acting as an arcade.
09:49The idea that light comes from above with these skylights.
09:53And this central gathering place in the middle.
09:55And all these potted plants that bring greenery into the center.
09:58And you could see here at the bottom, the escalator that goes up to the upper level.
10:03A mall of this size would simply not work if it relied on stairs or elevators.
10:08In fact, without the rise of escalators, there is no mall.
10:11When the economy began to recover after World War II,
10:14retailers were looking for an edge to get the most out of every visitor to their store.
10:19And the Otis Elevator Company began heavily marketing one of its main products,
10:23the escalator, as a tool to accomplish this.
10:26The escalator fit seamlessly into the ideas of Gruen's designs.
10:30It allowed people to flow effortlessly between floors, unlike stairs.
10:35And without losing sight of stores like you would in an enclosed elevator.
10:39The other thing the elevator does is it pulls you out of the space.
10:42So you not only lose sight of the stores, but you're no longer part of the action.
10:46You're no longer part of the environment.
10:48So the other thing the escalator allowed for was this sort of multiple paths through the space.
10:53You could see the whole space while you were riding the escalator.
10:55And you could decide, hey, I want to go over there.
10:58This optionality, this multiple choice of paths amplifies the Gruen transfer once again.
11:04So escalators really took off in a big way.
11:07And in fact, the number of escalators worldwide roughly doubles every 10 years.
11:12And with a single escalator, you're able to move 7,000 or 8,000 people up one floor in one
11:17hour.
11:18In a giant space like this one, you could see how valuable that kind of people-moving technology would be.
11:24But to get an idea of how truly massive this shopping mall is, you have to look at it from
11:29the outside.
11:30This image is just amazing to me.
11:32Let's break down what we've seen.
11:33There are these four anchor stores at these corners.
11:36You could see these hotel and office complex at the two midsection ends.
11:43Then there are these two massive parking garages at the ends, which hold over 12,000 cars.
11:50And then there are the smaller shops that surround the central skylighted atrium in the middle,
11:57which is part of the seven-acre theme park.
12:00And if we take a look at that from the interior,
12:04those skylights here are these skylights here.
12:07There are 55 of these huge skylights in this central zone right here.
12:14So in this view, you can see the theme park is actually the Nickelodeon universe,
12:18but it used to be Camp Snoopy based on the Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schulz,
12:22who's also from Minnesota.
12:24And so the other thing about this space in the middle is that it's absolutely massive
12:29and you can easily get lost in it amongst all these plantings and pavilions and amusement rides.
12:36But the rest of this mall is essentially laid out like a grid, which is what you'd call a Cartesian
12:40layout.
12:41The second of the three major types of mall plans that you most commonly see.
12:45And the name Cartesian comes from the great philosopher René Descartes,
12:50who was also a mathematician who created the system for plotting locations
12:54using an X and Y axis as reference points.
12:57So essentially, this Cartesian grid is basically just a dumbbell multiplied.
13:02So what happens is if you wanted to get from one anchor to the other anchor,
13:06you've got to go through a dumbbell.
13:07But if you wanted to get diagonally from one anchor to the other anchor,
13:11you either have to navigate all the way around,
13:13or you've got to get lost in the center of this maze-like layout.
13:18And so if all you wanted to do was get to these four anchor stores,
13:21you'd have to walk around the entire massive 5.6 million square foot mall.
13:26So this mall has been expanded many times, including a $325 million addition in 2015,
13:32where they added these hotel and office parks.
13:36But the Mall of America has ambitious plans to expand once again,
13:39this time adding a $430 million water park with a lazy river and a retractable roof,
13:45as well as additional hotels and another parking garage.
13:49But although the Mall of America is certainly the largest shopping mall in the United States,
13:53there's nowhere that maximizes the Gruen transfer quite like Las Vegas.
13:59This is an interior view of the forum shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
14:04And there's a lot of really interesting things going on in this image.
14:08So instead of introducing natural light from above, now they introduce the fake sky,
14:13so that you think it's natural light, but in fact, it's completely unnatural.
14:18And that allows them to control the time of day. So it's always the same time inside,
14:23very much how casinos like to work. You have no idea that time is passing.
14:29And so you're prone to spend even more time in a place.
14:34The other thing that this layout does that you see in this photo is it curves the pathways,
14:40so you can't see the end. So it feels almost endless.
14:44The other thing that I find really amusing about this is this is supposed to emulate like a Roman
14:50village from ancient times. And then I love that they take this medieval castle language and stick
14:57it on top of that. I just think that's brilliant. And that's a really Las Vegas thing to rebuild
15:02history, like in a cartoon way. They have the pyramids, they have the Eiffel Tower,
15:06they have the New York skyline and the Trevi Fountain in Rome. I love this because what you have here
15:10is
15:10exactly what Gruen was inspired by, but in this twisted perverted way. So if Gruen was inspired by
15:17the original mall that had shops on either side, and then it was covered and became an arcade with
15:24the skylight. And then that became his mall, which also was covered with natural light coming in. This
15:32has taken it all the way back to the beginning, but in this perverse and weird way in that now,
15:37it's the sky is fake and it's completely covered, but it's made to appear as if it's uncovered.
15:43And at the same time, it's pretending you're in the past instead of being modern and contemporary
15:48as Gruen intended it to be. The classical architecture and fake sky in one sense echoes
15:53Gruen's original vision of a European public plaza, but it's been distorted to be entirely about commerce
15:59and even in a subtle way begins separating people instead of bringing them together. That's because
16:05instead of the dumbbell or Cartesian grid shape from the first two examples, this mall introduces
16:10the idea of a cluster design. In essence, a cluster design is intended to sort shoppers
16:15into groups by putting stores with similar target demographics into the same area of the mall,
16:21clustering those stores together. For example, one area might have all your sports equipment and
16:26athletic shoe stores together, and another might be jewelry stores and so on. So when we look at this
16:32from above, you can see that this is the strip right here. Caesar's Palace is over here. The fake sky
16:38is here and the fake sky is here. So there's essentially three clusters. There's the cluster
16:43that has the fountain show, which is an event-based cluster and then has simple stores around it.
16:49There's the cluster that has the high-end shops over here, which connects directly to the casino.
16:54And then there's this multi-story mall within a mall that happens to be right off the strip.
17:00So around the fountain show, you find staple brands like Nike and the Cheesecake Factory,
17:06things that appeal to a broad swath of the population. And in the central area where the
17:12high-end shops are located, you find brands such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Rolex, Jimmy Choo,
17:20Gucci, Versace, Balenciaga. So I love the idea that after you've won at the casino, after you won big,
17:27you walk in directly to the high-end shops in the center. So if you're in the casino, where you
17:32don't know what time of day it is, and you exit to go into the shops, you still don't know
17:37what time
17:38of day it is because it's artificially controlled with that forever sunset in the fake sky. And then
17:44the mall within the mall, you find souvenir shops, toy stores, drug stores, the things you would expect
17:50to find when you walk in off the strip. So by looking at these three malls, you can see the
17:55journey of an
17:55idea from a space for community to a space that maximizes revenue. So what do you think? Did Gruen
18:03succeed or did he fail in creating a public plaza for the American suburbs?
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