From the Market Hall to the Shopping Mall - a Typology of Shop Architecture

Economic considerations have a major influence on buildings for retail and consumer purposes. The cheaper the outer skin, the greater the profit: that is certainly one attitude today. On the other hand, a successful sales strategy is determined by a variety of factors, including circulation and routing and the general atmosphere of a shop or store. Many architects associate retail buildings with commercialism; in other words, structures that have to exert an influence on customers inevitably result in populistic design. But to regard commercial factors as a tiresome appendage and not to recognize them as one of the bases of our cultural development would be an elitist misapprehension.