ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW / SUSAN VAUGHN : Valencia Town Center Blends Mediterranean and Victorian Themes

Eclecticism usually poses hazards in architecture. The blending of styles, old and new, can result in shapeless, indefinable masses, devoid of personality and charm.

Most Southern California malls fit this description. Sprawling and amorphous, their interiors are mere collections of storefronts, dotted with pretentiously placed trees and multicolored signs. No wonder that, as architectural as well as a social phenomena, malls have been the butt of jokes since their inception in the 1960s.

Happily, the Valencia Town Center, which opened Thursday at the intersection of Valencia Boulevard, Magic Mountain Parkway and McBean Parkway in Valencia, shatters the stereotype. It is vibrant, innovative and alive, offering a strong sense of time and place. Here, the mix of styles has resulted in a welcoming tour de force , a place that blends into its surroundings while establishing itself as a truly public place to meet in the Santa Clarita Valley.

RTKL, the architecture firm that designed the mall, succeeded in an almost impossible mission.

The simple, Mediterranean-style exterior seems to be a natural choice for Valencia’s golden-brown hills. But the firm created the Town Center’s interior to resemble an exposition fair from the Victorian era. In lesser hands, the combination of these two very different architectural styles would lead to disaster.

The mall’s exterior is substantial and welcoming. The mall’s anchor tenants of May Co., J.C. Penney, and Sears, Roebuck & Co. occupy spaces that resemble angular mountains--solid, secure, and in harmony with the surrounding countryside. Parking and ingresses have been well-planned so that traffic flows smoothly. Mall entrances are elegantly conservative; there are no fluorescent signs, Buckingham Palace-style doorways, or gaudy statuary to scare away pedestrians.

Inside is where the true delights begin. The mall’s interior is evocative of England’s Crystal Palace, one of the most important edifices of the 19th Century. The Crystal Palace was built in 1851 by Joseph Paxton to house a Great Exhibition of arts, wares, and exotic gifts from all over the world. It was a miracle of its time.

The Crystal Palace occupied 772,000 square feet and was built entirely of iron and glass. Dapper gentlemen and beautifully dressed ladies paraded down its sprawling avenues, past bubbling fountains, bountiful foliage, colorful flags and delicate statuary. Queen Victoria and her adored husband, Albert, presided at the opening of the Crystal Palace before 5,000 guests. Within its first six months, nearly 6 million visitors passed through its wrought-iron gates.

Like the Crystal Palace, the Valencia mall is brightly sky-lit, abundantly expansive and festive. Painted steel trusses, glass ceiling panes and colorful wood paneling recall Victorian fair buildings of a century ago. The mall’s Rotunda entrance establishes its 19th-Century theme immediately: a bubbling fountain and custom-designed carousel invite young and old to stop, play, then go within.

The interior of the mall, furnished with well-polished wooden benches and planters filled with palms and philodendrons, encourages shoppers to stop and sit and talk--socializing in the free-flowing way that residents of small towns once did as they strolled down wide Main Street sidewalks.

Each of mall’s storefronts, 76 out of 110 that are now occupied, is brazenly individual, offering visual stimulation. Yet each carries out in some way to the mall’s Victorian theme, be it with frosted glass, Gibson girl forms, sensuous signage script, masculine dark woods or ultra-refined color palettes.

Verdant murals by artists Keith Sklar, John Wehrle and Terry Schoonhoven tower above the mall’s palms and walkways, chronicling Santa Clarita’s development by artfully juxtaposing images of the valley’s agricultural past with its present as an irrigated suburb and expanding center for jobs and retailing.

One panoramic picture displays rows of orange trees near a gabled Victorian house. Another mural portrays a movie crew filming scenes for a Western near a two-story suburban house with a red compact car parked in the driveway.

The one noticeably modern element in the Town Center’s interior is its elevator housing, a playful Charles Moore-ish structure that somehow fits nicely into its faux -historical surroundings.

A slogan, engraved on a floor-mounted clock, seems to sum up the Valencia Town Center experience as well as the role it expects to play as this “edge city” strives to establish its own identity separate from the Los Angeles metropolis: “Pride in the Past, Commitment to the Future.”

Susan Vaughn frequently writes about architecture and other subjects for The Times. Times staff writer Carol Watson contributed to this report.