The Architect's NotepadStrip SearchDesign for New Strip Mall Revealed, but How Does it Measure Up? Our Architecture Critic Samantha Morse Lets Us Know.
After months of planning and a series of design disputes, The Canon Group has released the final design for Chesterfield Ridge's new strip mall. The design--one that invokes the Neo-Classical sensibilities of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and the post-modern tendancies of the Venturis--has been at the center of a fierce debate between The Canon Group (TCG) on one side, and the Town Board on the other. The Town Board alledges that TCG failed to take into consideration previously agreed upon design elements, such as a series of gradually diminishing Romanesque columns (TCG wanted Doric) and intricate trompe l'oeils on the structure's facade, clearly a post-modernist nod to the Robert Venturi's notion of a "painted shed."
TCG on the other hand, with their strong sense of space, and the integrating of outdoor and indoor held strong to their vision of the space as the end stages of a minimalist continuum established by the likes of Le Corbusier and even, to a less articulated degree, Mies Van Der Rohe. TCG claims that the irony inherent in the Town Board's vision would compromise the overall integrity of a structure whose main goal is to point out, in an underhanded fashion, the futility of capatalist pursuits. Too much irony, apparently, is a bad thing (just don't tell Philip Johnson!), or to echo Corbu's sentiments, this is not a pipe.
But these squabbles are now a thing of the past, and all that is left is the design (
see below). So, is it any good? The short answer is yes, but the design is not without its faults. To begin generally, the space will occupy what is now 3 acres of wooded area near Stone Street, a nook tucked away from the (minimalist one might say) "hustle of bustle" of downtown Chesterfield Ridge. The irony in the location is apparent: escape the madness of one anthill into the arms of an equally busy beehive. Cute.
The facade of the building will be in stucco, another nod to Robert Venturi's idea of complexity and contradiction, best exemplified in the house he built for his mother Vanna. All of the conventions are present (sloping roof, big picture windows), only in proportions that are slightly skewed and a tad demented. To the layman, the design is that of any other strip mall, but a closer inspection reveals an impressive array of influences, from the landscape architecture and parallelism of Thomas Jefferson, to the palladian windows that are, impressively, also a reference to a reference (TJ was influenced by classicism, which he in turn turned into neo-classicism).
These design elements, along with many others, combine to create an impressive visceral rush of impressions. For instance, the utter squareness of the space seems to indicate the mundane nature of life in a strip mall: an agreed upon sequence of events repeated day after day after day after... Each interior space is identical to the one next to it, creating a sense of claustrophobia and anxiety within the patrons of these stores and asking the question, Are we ever free from our monetary pursuits? The answer, according to the design, seems to be no, and this notion is amplified by the sight of luxury vehicles roaring up and down Main Street.
Now the negative. For starters, the design seems awfully amateur in some regards, such as the (over)use of plastics, concrete, and other industrial materials. Yes, we get it, materials should be easily reproduced and, yes, we remember Frank Lloyd Wright's occasional Brutalist streak, but this theme is already well-developed in the structure of the space and need not be reiterated through the building materials as well. In short, it is thematic overkill.
Furthermore, and this may be an inescapable trapping of the genre and a larger philosophical question at worst, how can a design whose message is one of anti-consumerism effectively serve as a place of the very thing it seeks out to destroy? But I digress...
Utlimately the success of the design will be determined by those who will inhabit the space: namely the patrons of the stores and the shop owners. An early and incomplete listing of the stores scheduled to take the various spaces reads like any shopping plaza in any upscale town in America: GAP, J. Crew, Whole Foods, and so on.
The only non-profit name on the list was the Fresh Air Fund, who will be using their space as an office away from their New York City HQ. This occupation, however, seems as though it will be short-lived. The wealthy residents of Chesterfield County can stomach stuffy post-modern architecture, but minorities? Now that's another story.
-SM
The (mostly) brilliant design for Chesterfield Ridge's new upscale strip mall. Whether or not it will be a success has yet to be determined.Graphic courtesy of The Canon Group. Copyright 2006.
