| Summary: | Having emerged in the United states as a component of a certain urban continuum—or rather a suburban one—characterized by dispersion of the population, the conception of the regional shopping center fits into a strategy of urban decentralization serving purposes of national defense, driven by political and economic actors. Through the morphological analysis of a representative sample of regional shopping centers designed by Victor Gruen (a pioneering architect of this type of building around the 1950s), it is possible to reveal the nature of the shopping center’s relationship with its regional context, and particularly with neighboring urban entities. Master plans like those for Palm Springs California or Maryvale Subdivision in Arizona show that Gruen tried to integrate shopping malls into a regional context encompassing a multitude of urban functions. Although the architect mainly attempted to connect his buildings with road infrastructures by studying their location and of the flows they supported in order to offer drivers better accessibility and easy parking, the regional shopping center could nevertheless be considered an introverted architectural unit that is “autonomous”, manifesting a certain “discontinuity” in relation to its external environment.
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