Edina, Minnesota, is home to a massive—yet somehow nondescript—living relic of architectural history: the first modern mall, Victor Gruen’s 1956 Southdale Center. Innovative at the time, the mall is inward facing, with stores contributing to a new kind of communal plaza. But today, at the Galleria Edina, another mall just across the street, a new Design Within Reach (DWR) store aims to break away from this inward-focused architecture.
New York–based firm DFA has designed 23 DWR stores across North America, developing some of the retailer’s signature elements: enormous “light clouds” that showcase pendants, and “houses,” or clusters of rooms, that suggest how DWR pieces could come together in a home. But for the new store in Edina, DFA’s main objective was to enable the space to lure customers and shine, in spite of its location on the mall’s lower level.
This story is from the February 2018 edition of Metropolis Magazine.
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This story is from the February 2018 edition of Metropolis Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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