Watching a video about forest fair village mall (aka Cincinnati Mills) and it truly is an amazing example of the period of design directly following y2k. It was last refurbished in 2004 and it REALLY looks like it, it’s so colorful and unique. I wonder if we’ll have a similar period of design in the next few years, when everyone gets tired of minimalism. I kind of doubt it, though, since our stage of capitalism demands versatility, which this kind of design doesn’t really allow for. It makes me so sad to think about how perfectly good stores were stripped of all their unique features about 10 years ago to make way for bland, “sleek” design. We all know that’s just code for “when we go out of business, the next business won’t have to update the space before moving in”. It’s so sad how corporate greed and distrust of the general public turns beautiful spaces into lifeless nothingness.
I’ll link the video, but here’s a few details I liked:
-there was a media play store!! When it went out of business I’m 2006, the mall really went downhill
-the banners with line drawings of women (who really look like the mid-2000s online version of Barbie) are pixelated and obviously drawn on a small screen and blown up
-when the mills corporation took over the mall in 2004, they banned groups of more than 3… idk what they were thinking there. Obviously you need more customers when your mall has been bankrupt since the year after it opened (1988). But sure… cut down on those annoying teens (the only ppl buying shit)
Anyway, that’s a quick peek into my fascination with this mall and dead malls in general.
Here’s a link to the video: https://youtu.be/W-lYxKhErMo?si=wc0OO0dLMR1ZMpfi
