Thursday 7 February 2013

The new old

A Slate Culture Gabfest segment on the death of the American mall (responding to this article in The Atlantic Cities) got me thinking - might abandoned mega-malls be the next warehouses and power plants for museum and gallery building projects?

Sure, they're not anywhere near as architecturally attractive. But boy, do they have a lot of parking space. After tweeting this little thought, I got sent this article about an American tech company that took over an abandoned mall for its 3000+ workforce, and the website for the Renew Newcastle projects (revitalisation of urban spaces through creative projects and businesses - not quite what I'm thinking about here.)

Also, someone made this lovely promise. Just tell me where to vote.

1 comment:

Mark Amery said...

Wellington has a huge surfeit of office buildings which will need to be put to different uses - lots of residential but gallery projects make extreme sense. We've just started the process with www.urbandreambrokerage.org.nz rolling out a pile of public art projects in all kinds of vacant commercial spaces - but the vision is for it to go far wider. There's a whole lot of space not going anywhere in our cities and a whole lot of start up creatives ready to grow if given some soil to plant in!