The “Magic of the Mall”: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment

Abstract Shopping is the most important contemporary social activity, and, for the most part, takes place in the shopping center. Developers and designers of the retail built environment exploit the power of place and an intuitive understanding of the structuration of space to facilitate consumption and thus the realization of retail profits. They strive to present an alternative rationale for the shopping center's existence, manipulate shoppers' behavior through the configuration of space, and consciously design a symbolic landscape that provokes associative moods and dispositions in the shopper. These strategies are examined to obtain an understanding of how the retail built environment works, and how we might work against it.