Shopping Mall Parking Lot as/is a Meeting Place: Typologies and Strategies for a New Polarity in Architectural and Landscape Design

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study developed around the general theme of the future of large shopping centers in relation to the current transformations of territory and city in Italy. Specifically, the research deals with outdoor spaces, those enormous technical and service spaces strictly connected to the commercial "big-boxes". The focus of the research is therefore on the large parking areas, the roads, the manoeuvring and service areas for sales: the large asphalt slabs that surround the commercial volumes. The research starts from the specific case study of the large shopping center "Tiare" in Villesse, Gorizia (one of the largest in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region) and then extends to the development of a more general and scientifically articulated modelling. The objective was to translate the initial retrospective study (origins and development of shopping centers) and the design explorations developed in the academic sphere and through workshops on the potential of the case study into strategies, exportable to other contexts. The spaces involved are considerable, amounting to 2-3 times the sales area, i.e., parking lots of 30-40-60 hectares, the same extension of an entire town. From this it is easy to understand the importance of the architectural design on other disciplines, and the need to question "if and how" these spaces can also become something else, if they can also have a social role due the dimensional-territorial entity, and specifically, recovering the American tradition from Gruen onwards, if they can assume the role and function of a meeting place. The research allowed the identification of methodologies for the transformation of car parks into meeting points: the creation of a landmark, densification and screening. In addition, the results obtained offer possible new developments for these places that can be identified in the following macro-strategies: the re-urbanisation of peripheral commercial nodes, neural development between city and shopping centre, parallel and autonomous development of shopping malls and cities, commercial development and urban erosion.