ARCHITECTURE : Fox Hills Mall Shows You Can’t Judge a Building Only by Its Exterior
The Fox Hills Shopping Mall is an ugly building that hides a big surprise. You might say that it is not much of a building at all, only a singular, soaring, light-filled interior.
On the outside, all you get is a few fragmentary walls crammed in between three very different-looking department stores and a parking deck, but on the inside you are surrounded by one continuous space lit by baffled skylights and crossed by terraces, ramps and staircases. It all comes together there.
The Fox Hills Mall follows the logic of shopping malls to an almost elegant extreme. Malls are interior crossroads of commerce, which is to say that they offer an artificial version of the city housed in a hangar. Some have argued that movie sound stages, where Baghdad could be built in a day, were the prototypes for our shopping malls.
The whole point is to get you inside, separate you from the distractions of the real world and sell you as much fantasy as possible. The outside form is only meant to be large enough to be recognizable and bland enough not to keep anyone away.
Some architects try to monumentalize their malls, and others, like John Jerde (designer of the Westside Pavilion) try to compete in the fantasy game. Cesar Pelli, the designer of this particular establishment, just played it straight. He was given a lot pressed against a bluff to the south and separated from the rest of the city by the 405 and 90 freeways. William Pereira designed the rounded brick Broadway store, while the May Company and J.C. Penney chose to create featureless boxes. So Pelli concentrated on the interior.
Simplicity and clear space turn out to be difficult to achieve in most malls because there is so much signage; retail experts tell you that you have to design meandering pathways of least resistance. Pelli responded by creating a space that was bigger than any of these concerns. In the center of the mall, the walls rise up almost 30 feet above the top of the stores. Then he created a simple but strong roof shape by using coves that catch the light brought in through clerestories and diffuse it into a soft glow. The effect is almost like that of the nave of a church.
He used the slope of the site to create different levels of stores--two to the north and three to the south, each slightly offset from the other. All of these levels meant he needed bridges, ramps, escalators and stairs that help populate this large space with people at as many different places as possible.
Another rule of shopping mall design is that they have to be renovated every few years, but in this case the newest design has only detracted from the original concept. What were once red railings and accent colors are now painted muddy blue, and overdone fixtures and garish tile patterns mingle with the cacophony of storefronts to create visual confusion.
The outside, which is the part of the Fox Hills Mall that could really use some help, is still a confused combination of the work of various architects and department store designers in the usual sea of parking.
When the Fox Hills Mall was completed in 1976, it became a mecca for Westside shoppers, both because it predated many of its now more fashionable competitors and because it offered the convenience of a bus stop outside one of its entrances.
The mall is not quite so trendy now, but it still offers some qualities not to be found nearby: freeway accessibility, a mixture of stores catering to different classes and racial groups, and the best indoor commercial space in the county.
Aaron Betsky teaches and writes about architecture and urban design.
