Born in the 1950s, these temples of commerce were symbols of the US consumer culture – but many are now dying out. Jonathan Glancey takes a look.
Shopping malls are not meant to be sinister. And, yet, in 1977, George A Romero chose to film sequences of Dawn of the Dead, his cult horror zombie movie, in a deserted mall. Shorn of life and light, the great echoing chambers of the enclosed shopping centre took on a very eerie tone indeed. Curiously, Romero’s set design has much in common with photographs of the ever-increasing number of abandoned malls strewn across the United States from California to New England. There are well over a hundred of these lifeless concrete and steel behemoths sprawled beside freeways on the fringes of far-flung American suburbs.
Economic decline in certain areas − notably the mid-West − combined with an accelerating trend towards online shopping and new forms of urban shopping centres have pushed the once seemingly invincible and all-American shopping mall into decline. Many are thriving, and being renovated and extended, yet 『ghost malls』 are fast becoming the 『ghost towns』 of the early 21st Century, and photographers have begun to see them as fascinating, if decidedly disturbing ruins.
Inside, their acres of kitsch design seem even sorrier than a seaside funfair out-of-season. All that marble, those wall tiles, the broad, Hollywood-like stairs − leading nowhere today − and sorry details like a sign on a wall of the Crestwood Court mall, St Louis, reading 「Rest Easy」, is both a little trashy and rather poignant.
All the more poignant, in fact, because the first US malls were not meant to have been sited miles from anywhere and reached only by big, air-conditioned automobiles with automatic transmission and power-everything. No, Victor Gruen, the 『father of the shopping mall』 meant them to be the core around which new settlements would cluster, with apartments, clinics, schools and, one day soon enough, all the facilities and life that go together to make thriving urban settlements.
Born in Vienna in 1903, Gruen was a lifelong socialist who trained as an architect in his home city before abandoning it for New York at the time of the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. Gruen went on to design the world’s first fully enclosed shopping mall, the Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota. It opened in 1956, the year Elvis first broke into the charts, with Heartbreak Hotel, Norma Jean Mortenson changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, IBM invented the hard disk drive, and Fidel Castro and Che Guevara landed in Cuba.
The American way
Gruen’s homes, schools, lakes and parks remained a pipe dream as Edina, Minnesota and, subsequently, the US as a whole went on a prolonged air-conditioned shopping spree in buildings that waxed ever bigger and yet more kitsch. The mall became a place to hang out as well as to shop, a central part of contemporary US culture and a model for much of the rest of a world keen on emulating an American way of life.
There had, of course, been malls of a sort long before the Southdale Center, beginning with Trajan’s Market in Ancient Rome, built around 100AD by Apollodorus of Damascus, a Syrian-Greek architect and engineer, while the great souks of Aleppo, Istanbul and Damascus itself were nothing less than spectacular shopping centres. What was new about the US malls is that they were fully enclosed, inward-looking structures designed to be serviced by the car, encouraged by relaxed tax and planning laws and set in isolated locations.
In the mid-1990s, US malls were being built at a rate of 140 a year. The brakes went on in 2007, the first year in half-a-century that no new malls were built in America: recession had bitten deep into the US economy. Now, malls began to close, although some had become unpopular for reasons other than purely economic ones.
When the 35-year-old Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield, Virginia, closed in 2007, the Chesterfield Observer noted that while it had been a popular hangout for families in the 1970s and '80s, 「That all changed in the 1990s. Cloverleaf’s best customers, women, began staying away from the mall, fearful of the youth who were beginning to congregate there. People [said a former Cloverleaf manager] started seeing kids with huge baggy pants and chains hanging off their belts, and people were intimidated, and they would say there were gangs.」
The shopping mall had long lost its 1950s atmosphere of hedonistic, all-American innocence. And, as many became redundant, so they were abandoned like giant refuse thrown from even bigger automobiles. And, because they had been built on an increasingly ambitious scale and are essentially giant boxes with vast rooms inside shot through with miles of mechanical and electrical services, these were never going to be easy structures to convert to new uses, even though many Americans have suggested they become giant leisure centres: bowling alleys, funfairs and casinos. This is not such a bad idea: the demolition of such huge buildings could only appear to be a case of conspicuous consumption and wastefulness on a truly titanic scale.
Today, the largest malls are in very different parts of the world. The biggest of all is the New South China Mall, Dongguan, covering a floor area twenty times that of St Peter’s in Rome, and well over twice of the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania, the biggest in the US. Among the top ten largest malls in the world are two, perhaps surprisingly, in Iran, while even Bangladesh with a GDP per capita of $1,851 boasts a new mall far bigger than Pennsylvania’s 「King of Prussia」 (the same figure for the US is $51,749 according to the World Bank).
Shop horror
The world has gone on a gigantic spending spree, and yet as the experience of America’s 『ghost malls』 shows, fashions do indeed come and go. Soon enough, and just as no one knows how to make use of Ancient Egyptian temples today, shopping malls will become the stuff of archaeology and folklore. A place for the living dead, too, perhaps, although the mall George Romero chose to film Dawn of the Dead in - the Monroeville Mall, near Pittsburgh, opened in 1969 − is doing well. It was expanded and renovated in 2013-14, yet still revels in the roles it has played not just in Dawn of the Dead, but in the 1983 movie Flashdance, too, as well as in 1984’s The Boy Who Loved Trolls and in Steven King’s horror novel, Christine.
As a building type, and social and economic phenomenon, the shopping mall has a way to go, and yet it has already spawned its own wrecks and ruins. These tell us more than enough about the ways we have chosen to spend and live over the past half-century. Looking at photographs of abandoned malls, those ways can certainly be unsettling, and even just a little horrifying.
這些誕生於上世紀50年代的商業神廟曾是美國消費文化的象徵——而如今卻在持續衰亡。英國廣播公司（BBC）記者喬納森·格朗西（Jonathan Glancey）帶你走進衰敗的美國購物中心。
提到商場，你絕不會聯想到「陰森」和「破敗」，但在1977年，美國導演喬治·A·羅梅羅（George A Romero）為了拍攝喪屍片《活死人黎明》（Dawn of the Dead），特地將一個購物中心打造成令人毛骨悚然的「鬼城」。了無生機、昏暗無光、封閉的商場裡傳來的陣陣迴響，令人毛骨悚然。時隔近30年，羅梅羅的片場布置似乎在從加州到新英格蘭一路的荒廢商場照片中重現了。在美國偏遠郊區，有一百多家空蕩蕩的鋼筋混凝土巨物蔓生於高速公路旁。
以美國中西部尤為嚴重的地區經濟下滑，加之網購的興起和新型城市商場的出現，一度將曾經所向披靡的美式購物中心逼上了絕路。其中很多購物中心或發展，或整修，或擴建，但在本世紀早期，仍不乏有「鬼商場」成「鬼城鎮」的案例，而攝影師也以別樣的視角發現了這些「鬼城」之美。
往裡瞧，內部設計似乎比過時的濱海樂園更不堪。那些大理石、牆磚、好萊塢式的大樓梯在今天早就被淘汰了。而像掛在克雷斯特伍德購物中心（the Crestwood Court mall）和聖路易斯購物中心（St Louis）的「請放心」標識更是顯得有點多餘，但看著又覺心酸。
更讓人痛心的是購物中心的選址。事實上，第一代美國購物中心不應該只為開得起豪車，有錢有勢之人服務。不是這樣的。「購物中心之父「維克多·古魯恩（Victor Gruen）表示，新住宅區的購物中心要有凝聚力，要能吸引公寓、診所、學校在此安家，在不遠的將來，還要能招攬其他設施和人員到此落戶，打造一個個欣欣向榮的城市住宅區。
1903年出生於維也納的古魯恩是社會主義的終生實踐者。在1938年納粹德國吞併奧地利以前，他在家鄉學習建築設計，後來被迫逃亡到紐約。古魯恩隨後設計了世界上第一個全封閉式的購物中心——位於明尼蘇達州伊代納市（Edina）的南溪谷購物中心（Southdale Center），並於1956年開張。那一年，貓王埃爾維斯憑藉一曲Heartbreak Hotel締創了他首支冠軍曲，諾瑪·簡·莫泰森（Norma Jeane Mortenson）改名瑪麗蓮·夢露（Marilyn Monroe），IBM發明了硬碟，菲德爾·卡斯楚和切·格瓦拉回到古巴。
美式購物中心
隨著人們越來越喜歡在大商場裡邊吹空調邊購物，從伊代納市到後來的全美，都目睹了不斷擴大的購物中心和越來越俗氣的裝潢。古魯恩的家園、學校、湖泊和公園設想也化為泡影。購物中心和商店成了閒逛的好去處，成了現代美國文化的主軸，也成了許多想效仿美國生活國家的樣板。
當然有比南溪谷購物中心資歷還老的購物中心。首當其衝的就是古羅馬時期的圖拉真市場（Trajan’s Market），它是由敘利亞的希臘人大馬士革的阿波羅多洛斯(Apollodorus of Damascus)主持設計。阿勒坡（Aleppo）、伊斯坦堡和大馬士革的的露天大市場也毫不遜色於豪華大商場。美國購物中心的新穎之處在於它的全封閉式構造，要驅車前往，有優惠的稅收和計劃法支持，位於孤立地區。
到了上世紀90年代中期，全美每年平均有140家購物中心拔地而起。2007年，一個急剎車，出現了50年來首次的零增長景象：經濟衰退。如今，很多購物中心都被迫關閉，儘管有的不僅僅是因為經濟不景氣。
2007年，運營三十五載的三葉草購物中心（Cloverleaf Mall）關門。切斯特菲爾德觀察者（the Chesterfield Observer）指出，這座購物中心曾在上世紀七八十年代繁榮一時，是家人朋友聚會的主要場所。「但到了90年代，一切都變了。三葉草的主要顧客為女性，而她們因為害怕聚集於此的年輕人而遠離了商場。」曾就職於三葉草購物中心的管理人員表示，「那時候會經常見到一些年輕人，他們穿著松松垮垮的褲子，褲頭上掛著粗粗大大的鏈子，遊蕩在商場裡。顧客有些害怕，會說那些少年是幫派裡的人。」
大型購物中心早已失去了上世紀50年代的享樂之風和美式純真。由於許多商場都「撞臉」，它們就像大規模垃圾一樣被更大的汽車一併排出去了。另外，因為這些商場都的規模一個比一個大，內部空間巨大，遍布機電設施，想要用作他途也非易事。雖然很多美國人建議可將其改造成大型的休閒娛樂中心，比如：保齡球場、遊樂場和賭場。這個主意也不是那麼糟糕：對大型建築的拆除只會讓人覺得是大尺度的揮霍和浪費。
今天，大型購物中心遍布世界各地。廣東省東莞市的新華南MALL（New South China Mall）是世界上最大的購物中心，建築面積是羅馬聖彼得廣場（St Peter’s）的20倍，是全美最大的購物中心——普魯士王購物中心(King of Prussia Mall)的兩倍多。沒想到的是，世界前十大購物中心有兩個在伊朗。人均國內生產總值1851美元的孟加拉國有著比賓夕法尼亞州的普魯士王購物中心還大的新商場。（而根據世界銀行數據，美國人均國內生產總值為5.1749萬美元）
「恐怖」的商場
整個世界仍處在消費熱潮之中。只是美國的「鬼城」告訴我們，潮流來了又走，也許過段時間，就像是我們弄不明白古埃及神廟到底有何用途一樣，這些購物中心也只剩下些考古的和民俗研究價值了。或許還真成了給活死人住的地方。雖然羅梅羅當初拍攝《活死人黎明》的門羅維爾購物中心（the Monroeville Mall）現在還運營得不錯，該購物中心臨近匹茲堡，於1969年開業，2013-2014年得到擴建和整修。至今，它不僅享受著電影《活死人黎明》所帶來的效應，還因在1983年電影《閃舞》(Flashdance)、1984年電影《愛巨怪的男孩》（The Boy Who Loved Trolls）和史蒂芬·金（Steven King）的恐怖小說《克裡斯汀》（Christine）出境而頗受關注。
作為一種建築類型、社會和經濟現象，購物中心還有一段路要走，但它早已寫下了自己的不歸路。這個現象充分地展示了過去五十年公眾的消費和生活方式。看著這些廢棄商場的照片，難免會心緒不寧，甚至還有點毛骨悚然。
（譯者 Juliecy 編輯 丹妮）
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