LEARNING FROM AN AYALA MALL - introduction

Passing through Makati City and her malls, the archetype of the emerging Southeast Asian city is at its purest and most intense. A careful documentation and analysis of the malls’ physical forms and relationships to the larger city context is therefore necessary. Ultimately, the mall needs to be liberated from its western precedents. I believe the mall will be the central architectural construct that will help to define a new type of urban form emerging in the cities of the global South, radically different from what we have known; one that we have been ill-equipped to deal with and that, from ignorance, we define today as merely peripheral or remnants of the colonial past. So, through open-minded and nonjudgmental investigation, I am trying to understand a mall in Makati City and to begin to evolve techniques for its representation and potential acquisition and handling.

Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour’s “Learning from Las Vegas”
Edited version by author