Introduction: Architecture and Transformation Tom Strickland Guest Editor
where under a single roof one could run from shop to shop with a Chargex card, shopping until dropping, Shawnessy is not a good design for shopping. The entrances to the need-specific buildings are often a block apart and protected by a great moat of parking. In some cases one could purchase a litre of milk and then return to the car, cross four lanes of traffic, get out of the car, sidestep through hundreds of parked cars to pick up a library book, only to do it all over again to purchase a much needed bottle of wine. Now imagine doing this with the kids in tow. We all have our tolerance levels, so why build such a place? Argu- ably economies of scale and brand identity are playing their part, yet here, massed in amongst the branded boxes we also find a high school, a library, and a recreation centre. The addition of these institutions in the mix connect Shawnessy with the idealized, but failed, democratic space of diversity of the shopping malls of the 1920s to 1950s, albeit in an exploded version. If a factor other then crude capitalism is evident here, it is the tendency for culture to move towards increased complex- ity. Robert Wright argues that the seemingly pointless cycles of cultural
From the days of the Olmec and early Maya, in 1200 BC, cultural influence was subtle and profuse, and with time it got only more so, as Mesoamerica’s population grew denser, and cultural contact, via trade and war, expanded.The whole region came more and more to resemble a single brain, test- ing [ideas] and spreading the useful ones. (Robert Wright. Non Zero:The logic of human destiny . Pantheon, 2000).
A t first glance ShawnessyTowne Centre, a sprawling shopping locale at the far south edge of Calgary, appears to be a big jumble of buildings with no obvious connectedness or cohesion. It is, in fact, a net- work of roadways, randomly located off a primary four lane cruciform axis, that lead to sequences of parking lots wrapped by a ribbon of sidewalks, as per the building code. Shawnessy Centre looks exactly like what it is supposed to look like, a big box shopping centre. It would be irresponsible not to ask, ‘why does such a place exist?’ Is it a folly of the capitalist elite, organized by greed to lure the hapless public into a shopping frenzy? Not likely. Unlike the shopping mall of the 1960s
Shawnessy Towne Centre, south Calgary, Alberta. ca 1998
Robert Wright soutien que les cycles apparemment n’ayant sans rime ni raison de la crois- sance et de la dégénérescence culturelles pointent à une évo- lution culturelle plus vaste sous laquelle les arts de la rédaction, de l’agriculture, de l’artisanat, de la construction et des domaines du commerce et du gouvernement s’enlignent vers des réseaux plus complexes
d’interdépendance.
À première vue, le Centre Shawnessy, un vaste centre commercial situé à la limite sud de Calgary, ne semble être qu’un méli-mélo d’immeubles n’ayant aucune connexion ou cohésion évidente de quelque sorte que ce soit. Il s’agit, en fait, d’un réseau de chemins se détachant, de façon aléatoire, d’un axe cruciforme primaire à quatre voies, qui mène à
des séquences de terrains de stationnement enveloppés d’un ruban de trottoirs, conformé- ment au code du bâtiment. Le Centre Shawnessy ressem- ble exactement à ce qu’il est sensé être: une énorme boîte de centre commercial. Il serait tout à fait irresponsable de ne pas se poser la question suiv- ante: « Pourquoi une telle place existe-t-elle? »
Une idée utile qui a surgi de cette progression culturelle est la démocratie. Étant presque un but universel, elle est dev- enue, en quelque sorte, le facili- tateur global de la prolifération du commerce et de la culture. Toutefois, à un niveau régional, la démocratie peut être incline à la décentralisation, qui semble
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O n S ite review
T ransformations
I ssue 7 2002
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