Butiken ett kvinnligt rum

Abstract

Every age htiilds its own monuments: palaces, chnrches, cathedrals. At the tum of the last century, business tycoons had the means and incendves to build "palaces". Architects were hired to design buildings which allowed them to experiment freely with glass, colours and patterns to create something out of the ordinary. The department store represented a new type of space. It was the first non-religious meeting place where respectable women could go alone without being accompanied by a man. They could go there with the purpose of shopping, in their new role as consumers. The importance of the department store for women's liberation in the USA is similar to that of the tearooms for the Suffragette movement in Britain. The shopping mall originates from two traditions: one is the fashionable shopping arcade catering for the affluent middle classes during the nineteenth century, the other from the department store which focused on selling mass-produced merchandise. The shopping mall presupposes the possession of a car and the idea of "one stop shopping". One has to drive to the shopping mall, but once there, one should be able to buy almost anything one wants. The architect behind the first American shopping mall was Victor Omen. He modelled it on the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, Italy. The shopping milieus attempted at US highway crossings are artificial versions of the European inner city shopping districts. In Europé, there are certainly also shopping malls or gallerias, but they are there for a different reason than those in the US and North America. The European galleria attracts the buyers with a special atmosphere which reinforces thejoy of consuming, whereas in the US, the malls are built because there are not normally such concentrated shopping areas in the cities.