Alexandra Lange
Architecture & design critic

KQED Forum: Get In Loser, We're Going to the Mall

A very fun conversation with some of the best mall memories from callers I have heard yet. Stay to the end for a Chuck E. Cheese cameo.

“The mall is personal,” writes design critic Alexandra Lange in her latest book Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. For denizens of the suburbs, the mall is the place where people got their first jobs, got their first taste of independence goofing around with middle school friends, or bought their first hot dog on a stick. And while often derided by design critics, the mall in its heyday has been immortalized in movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Clueless,” “Mean Girls,” and more recently “Stranger Things.” With the rise in the online economy, many have heralded the demise of these temples of commerce but malls continue to reinvent themselves. Mina Kim talks to Alexandra about the cultural and design history of malls and we hear from you about your favorite mall memory.