Malls: a Modern Revelation of Public Space in Tehran

Khademi, Shahrzad; Alipour, Sara

Malls: a Modern Revelation of Public Space in Tehran

Document Type : Review

Authors

Shahrzad Khademi ¹
Sara Alipour ²

¹ Ph.D candidate in Landscape Architecture, Nazar research laboratory, Iran and University of Paris8, France.

² Ph.D candidate in Architecture, Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran branch.

Abstract

With the rapid growth of cities, the lack of efficient urban management, and the volume of construction that generally takes place without considering comprehensive plans and urban landscapes and expenses which goes to the town hall, our cities have been transformed into massive spaces that have been completely overlooked in terms of mass-space proportion. On the other hand, the disappearance of public spaces and lapses, which were a place for collective experience and socialization practices, and even the experience of a place, changed the face and the essence of the city into spaces without any quality and merely a physical and spiritless shell. This excessive expansion, which mandates consumerism and lofty demand, led the shopping centers to morph toward malls and mega malls, an area which has always been a place for the critique of urban area researchers and critics of modern architecture. The main objective of this research is to review these spaces from a new perspective. How to use the potentials of these new spaces? And whether malls can contribute to the formation of new kinds of public spaces? Although the reviews attributed to these spaces can be considered in diverse areas and the challenges posed can be studied, it seems that, in spite of the theories about the malls and the need to eliminate or marginalize these spaces in the city, in the last decade, we are faced with a kind of transformation in The function and even the concept of such spaces for the new generation of Iranian urbanites. After field surveys and the classification of observations by a descriptive and analytical method on four major commercial malls in Tehran, it was concluded that, these spaces, in addition to the spatial function and the role played in meeting the needs of a region, are transformed into A club or meeting circle, and perform as a place for social gatherings in the urban space of Tehran.

Keywords