thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2009/08/21/MallsRUs/ -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 8/21/2009
Last Visited: 9/6/2009
Mall designer Jon Jerde is shown in the midst of planning a million-square-foot project in Dubai, inspired largely by the Tower of Babel. (Polyglot workers, imported from around the globe, and paid 45 cents per hour to build these palaces of consumption, probably have much in common with the Babel of old.) The implications of this idea are overt, and obvious -- the end of days, biblical levels of destruction, which as the film points out, is pretty much the case.
...
Still, much of the utopian spirit that prompted Gruen's socialist vision, or even that of architect Jon Jerde, whose mall designs are in huge demand all over the world, came out of a humble and very human need.
Jerde explains that his career was prompted by the fact that he was a lonely little kid, growing up in a lonely country.
With a little help from science fiction author Ray Bradbury, Jerde envisioned the mall as a social space that could unite people in an empty and alienating urban environment.