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.