Reviews and Comments

I really wanted to like this book, and it makes lots of good and important arguments. Of particular interest, the research on how biological specificity (such as brain areas developing at different times) of baby boys meets Western bias, leading to boys receiving less attention and affection from their parents. It also covers well different aspects of "modern masculinity" from the incels community, to the difficulty of changing the culture around sex after #metoo without ostracizing kids making mistakes.

I'm however struck by how negatively the book describes boys and the physicality of children, especially in the memoir part; and by the lack of discussion around ADHD, the increasing prescription of Ritalin and how this plays in a culture of performance that is detrimental to all children. There's no denying Ritalin helps some children. But there are tons of discussions around the over-diagnosis of boys, especially non-white boys, and how it affects them long term. When tying personal experience so tightly in the argument... these kind of questions need to be better addressed.

I was also (as the mother of a boy) disappointed by how being physically active is always seen through the lens of boyhood, and not discussed through:
- the lack of playground and outdoor spaces
- the lack of school designs enabling movement
- the lack of outdoor preschool options following best recommendations for that age (motor coordination is the substrate for socio-emotional regulation in early childhood!)
- that there are tons of concerns about children's lack of physical activity and their poor motor skills development, resulting from a lack of support for motor experiences in childhood

Good on boys for wanting more playful, active environments! What if instead of focusing on children fitting immediately and neatly in adults-like environments, we embraced play? I'm sad for the girls described in the book as better because they sit still, wondering if they were offered a chance to play.

The book is surprisingly essentialist despite itself, and illustrates issues I've run into again and again: any mistake my toddler makes is interpreted as due to boyhood, but the exact same behavior from his friends who are girls is interpreted as normal development. I was hoping the book would avoid this pitfall, but it doesn't.

(I might have more thoughts later)

Lange highlights the many lessons the design history of malls offers when it comes to designing for a thriving public realm.

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About once a year I ask friends to meet by the fountain - the one in front of the railway station near the city I grew up in, in the north of France. This is what the title first brought to mind, and I wasn’t too far off. Lange examines the mall as an American form of architecture that provided a form of privately-owned public space for a wide range of people to meet and congregate. She points that, all of us in their thirties or older probably “has” a mall, its shape and structure living in our brain rent free. A form of architecture developing in the 1940s and expanding after World War 2, it peaks in the 1980s in the US, and I’d say a little later (1990-2000s) in France. The mall was the public realm of the suburbs, however tightly and privately controlled. The book shows how it came to be, and its cultural significance.

The first chapter focuses on the origins of the mall, a form of shopping district emerging with the (white) suburbs. It focuses on the work of Victor Gruen and Elsie Krummeck, who gave the mall its initial vocabulary: an indoor street lined with stores, department stores as anchor tenants, an atrium, an "I" shape getting progressively more complex by adding corners and aisles, the presence of public art. All factors that enable malls to become safe, entertaining spaces for many different groups, opened at most hours of the day and protected from the weather. The second chapter focuses on the indoor design of malls, the use of natural elements like plants and water plans, and the maintenance that goes into this controlled environment. Chapter 3 discusses malls as debated public infrastructure and contested development projects. Chapter 4 dives in the mall as an entertainment complex. Chapter 5 is all about the social groups coming to the mall, with a strong attention to youth culture, from arcades to media starts. Chapter 6 thinks through the mall as a background and participant in cinema, in particular horror zombie movies. Chapter 7 is all about the malls' loss of cultural relevance. Chapter 8 outlines ways forward for malls needing to stay relevant, and the development of food courts. Chapter 9 concludes with the mall abroad, and cities like Seoul that were essentially built on them. Along the way, malls are situated within the architecture and Science and Technology studies scholarship, and sci-fi author Bradbury makes an appearance: he strongly influenced the design of Los Angeles’s Glendale Galleria.


This is a book to pick through for some, and a book that will speak malls nerd and architecture amateurs. As a foreigner, I’d of course have loved to read more about the design of malls abroad and their roots in European department stores (which were of great importance in allowing women to independently meet in public spaces). Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames is mentioned, and I want to add Regarde les lumières mon amour, a diary of going to the mall by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux . The book speaks to the seasonality of malls’ sensory pleasures, their role in sustaining holidays practices like Christmas. Searching for pictures of "my" childhood mall, I was struck by how many photographs of Christmas decorations uploaded by visitors. It also focuses on what is almost absent from the architectural account beyond particular brands that thrived in malls: what people actually buy at the mall, the everyday purchasing, and the interactions with mall workers other than security like till holders. But of course the financing and planning dynamics leading to different mall cultures are too varied to be addressed in one book.

The images spread are arresting, featuring the Commons in Columbus (IN), Quincy Market in Boston (MA) and Horton Plaza in San Diego (CA). They demonstrate how we can learn from the design of malls to build actual public spaces. Lange, true to self, argues we deserve urban and architecture design that sustain communities and a thriving public realm. Malls, despite their limitations, offer many lessons.

Original review with links and images

Our book club pick for February was Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, edited by Amber Winick and Michelle Fisher (2021, MIT Press). The book functions like a catalog for the exhibitions organized by the editors and builds on a years-long project on Instagram, rooted in a collaboration with Maternity Care Coalition. Its rich visual iconography mixes personal and community archives, the technical, medical, social and private gaze. It stands out for its bright pink paper and for the stories mothers, their caregivers and designers need to hear.

Designing Motherhood brings to the foreground objects that are not obviously designed, would not usually be included in a design exhibition, but had to be conceived by someone. These objects shape our shared and individual experiences of birth. Belonging to the undervalued domain of care, they are invisibilized despite their impact.

The book is structured around four periods: before pregnancy, during pregnancy, at birth and in the early days. It’s at times a difficult read, because it speaks to a moment of vulnerability, of experiencing one’s own biological limitations. Pregnancy and childbirth are physically challenging and dangerous in the best of cases. Pregnancy is linked to the changes in auto-immune disorders; up to a third of women experience lasting health issues related to childbirth. In the TV series Battlestar Galactica, Dr Cottle comments synthetic humans should have upgraded the plumbing and many mothers would likely agree. Designing Motherhood strolls in that direction with a discussion of artificial wombs and how they may expand or lessen women’s rights if they became reality.

But the book highlights how we’ve missed the mark on what to design and how, only worsening the issue. It critically examines what objects say about the ideologies underpinning our conduct, from baby wearing to pushing strollers, in particular the impulse to believe we can optimise motherhood by buying the right things. It focuses on how these ideologies shape our relationships with ourselves, our children, our caregivers and our technologies. I found the case of technologies for listening to the fetus particularly fascinating (although the presentation of fetal monitoring during childbirth misses the nuances of current research). In places, the authors suggest how things could be different if we centered individual birthing people’s choices and well-being in design.

Choice is a central theme, not that it implies that choices happen in a vacuum or without constraints. The book discusses design-shaped choices in domains as varied as prenatal DNA testing, or visibilizing a pregnancy with clothing; choices as they are expanded by certain objects (the home pregnancy test); or the impossibility of choice (whether or not the labor will proceed without complications). And although the book focuses primarily on the United States, it does a great job at exposing how objects circulate around the world and may be adopted or not depending on local circumstances.

There’s a long way to go before each and every mother is supported in their transition to parenthood, including but not limited to their physical environment. There’s a long way to go until designers take into account the needs of mothers and parents. But this is a solid stepping stone to get there.

Originally published on Mothers in Art and Design