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The Gruen Effect
Victor Gruen is widely known as the inventor of the shopping mall. For Gruen, the creation of the shopping centre was not about shopping, instead he believed the mall ‘was a vehicle toward his real ambition: to redefine the contemporary city. For Gruen, the mall was the new city. 1 There were three areas that people occupied during their daily routine; home was the first, work was the second, and a community space was the third. While the post war boom was taking place homes were populating these suburbs at an exponential rate which in turn created more homes that were being occupied. With this influx of suburbanites moving away from the cities, ie. their jobs, there was going to be a need for that community space for people to inhabit.
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Gruen imagined there would be a culmination of program uses all in one place, very similar to his experiences back home in Viena. 2 These new places as mixed-use facilities, with apartments, offices, medical centers, child-care facilities, libraries, and even bomb shelters. They would be central gathering places that would grant social interaction and exchange. Gruen would be given many opportunities to bring his design theories to life.
