Commerce is the Engine of Urbanity: Victor Gruen and the Transformation of the American Landscape April 4, 2006

Lecture by Professor Alex Wall, AA Dipl. ARB

Sponsored by the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, GWU and the Latrobe Chapter, Society of Architectural Historians

In North America, the impact of retail shopping on the development of suburbs, the renewal of downtowns, and the spatial and programmatic order of emerging metropolitan regions can be first traced to the work of Victor Gruen. Yet his evolution from retail designer to philosopher of urbanism was not an isolated career trajectory. His fusion of retail with the idea of social and cultural center is the first link in a chain of projects leading from the postwar suburban regional shopping center to the "branded" urban districts today.

After Gruen this evolution is seen most clearly in the work of developer James Rouse and architect and planner Jon Jerde. Each became known by his shopping centers, but then went on to design urban districts and new towns. And each described himself as a community builder, set for himself (whether he met them or not) the highest social goals, and believed in the possibility of a new humanistic city.

Their work, though underappreciated, situates them (and the program they served: retail shopping) not at the edge of architectural culture but at its center.

Alex Wall is an American, a registered architect in the United Kingdom, and Chair of Urban Design in the Institute for Local, City, and Regional
Planning at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, where he is active in teaching, research and consulting. He taught formerly at the Architectural Association, London, and at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania. In 2005 he published: Victor Gruen: From Urban Shop to New City (ACTAR, Barcelona) and, as Bormann-Koch-Schmeing-Schroeder-Wall:
Zwischen_Stadt_Entwerfen (Mueller + Busmann, Wuppertal).