Malls and the Flow of Consumption: Ultimate Spaces of Imaginary Dream World
A combination of the words consumption, enjoyment, leisure and space is found in the concept of shopping mall. Enters a shopping mall the image of wealth, reflected by exhibition of commodities together with bright surfaces and shop windows, will capture imagination. This is a way to put the crowds in the dream world; the creation of spectacle.
The spectacle continues lasting in arenas within which images of wealth and wealthy life seem to be essential to exist. These spaces are capable of demonstrating the collective luxury that Lefebvre describes which no one can be excluded from6. Buck-Morss (1989) claims malls as ‘dream worlds’, which anchorage a utopian request for a perfect model of a society of ‘harmony and abundance’. Network of shopping malls, embodying the flow of consumers, is not much about creating a wide ranging and united identity architectural wise. What this network gives to the society is a plural site for consumption. Just as what it does to the communities; just as consumers within shopping spaces turn into pseudo-communities that spend time next to each other, this system is also created within urban context: separate buildings, located within the city network and function as focal destinations for consumers7. Considering ‘spaces as the site for pleasure’, shopping malls can be called as spaces of consumption. De polysemic et al (1998,) describe space of consumption as an organized space of culture and economy, which is marked by practices.
Shopping mall also represents aesthetics and ethical issues. Space is constantly produced through a range of human actions and undertakings; there is no facticity of space whatsoever (Lefebvre, 1977). Production of space is not an independent occurrence. Consumption is a spatial practice and spaces of consumption are physical assemblages formed by material artifacts, signs and symbols; and are strictly monitored and supervised (Styhre and Engberg, 2003).
Speaking with the vocabulary of marketing, spaces of consumption are elusively fabricated domains that aim to attract desire, attention and action. Walter Benjamin’s arcade is classic example of space of consumption; it is designed to empower spatial practices demonstrated in consumption. Contemporary spaces of consumption on the margins have become the main spatial arrangement. In this case, shopping mall comes in its utmost generic form, which is a pure space of consumption, designed to bias consumers and enabled for spatial practice (Styhre & Engberg, 2003).
In his seminar related to his collaborative research with Harvard school of Architecture, about shopping malls, Koolhaas points out ‘shopping’ as the terminal activity of the human race in the 21st century ; and the final phase of modernization. “Its pervasiveness erodes what we used to call civilization, shifts parameters; and smoothly and silently establishes an inescapable paradigm. Universe of both systematic over saturation and undernourishment; this combination explains our ambiguity”. In other words shopping and its related activities have become a part ofhuman culture . Accordingly spaces go through transformations; and those transformations are under the impact of cultural changes. Or, more specifically, there is a constant status change in terms of socio-economic, cultural and political conditions and they lead to spatial transformations or changes.
Spaces of consumption are commodified and contribute to the act of consumption. On the other hand, consumption has become a spatial act and a cultural attribute of the contemporary society. Shopping malls are advancing experiences of modern capitalist spaces; they turn into a medium for representation of the dominant ideology of the society and, at the same time, a victim of the same ideology (Spivak, 1999).
Modernization of Tehran has led to experiencing the act of consumption in a cultural context. As the other third world cities, growth of the urban structure has created needs for different social spaces; and ideology of consumption necessitated production of spaces of consumption. Growing detached from Grand Bazaar, known as the main socio-cultural structure of the traditional city, sprawl of shopping malls has created a network of imaginary within the reality of contemporary Tehran.