Of Shopping Malls And Performing Arts Centers

The comparison isn’t too crass, writes Andrew Taylor. “The most striking thing about this comparison is how differently the savvy mall developer and most cultural facility developers speak about what they do. With the shopping mall, at least among these two visionaries, design is about the consumers and how they engage with their world — what draws them in, keeps them in, and lowers their barriers to purchase. With cultural facilities, we seem, instead, to focus on the producers in the equation — the symphony, theater company, road shows — and what they need to produce their seasons.”