From post-war to post-Covid: Shifts in the Design and Vision of the Shopping Centre Experience

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The evolution in design and use of shopping spaces since modernity has been the focus of scholarlyattention through the 20th and 21st centuries across art history, urban studies, geography andanthropology (Stobart, 2014). This project combines art historical literature with in-depth visual analysesof architectural forms to shape a post-Covid theory of Britain's shopping landscape, at a point of its'becoming and disappearing (Benjamin, 2000). Focusing on the Midlands, I intend to explore this keyhistorical moment away from well-documented developments such as the Bullring and major cities likeLondon (Morrison, 2003), and beyond the department store (Crossick, 1999), thus incorporating a post-Covid theory into the field of art history.The global predicament facing shopping spaces is ever-increasingly the focus of news articles (Hatherley,2020; New York Times, 2020), underlining the need to advance art historical thought within the field. Iintend to situate this latest shift into a wider context that highlights how spaces of consumption arerefashioned over time, servicing capital and consumption.With the rise of e-commerce and virtual shopping, shopping typologies must adapt or face abandonment,which informs my project two-fold. I will leverage this research to incorporate innovative digital researchmethods into the field of art history, taking influence from Lev Manovich, coalescing digital culture theoryand image construction (2016). By focusing on the (re)production of spaces of consumption over time, I13 / 27also aim to shape a dialogue around how 'authenticity' and 'materiality' impact urban planning and thedesign of shopping typologies.How has the design, use and vision of post-war shopping typologies adapted to wider societal,technological and cultural changes? What does the post-Covid environment mean for future(re)development? These questions will be measured alongside the following objectives:- To coalesce literature across art history and other disciplines, including digital studies, to shape a theoryof shopping, post-war to post-Covid- To contribute valuable art historical analyses that broaden scholarship on shopping typologies- To shape an art historical methodology incorporating digital cultures, to look towards the future- To provide in-depth aesthetic and critical studies of 'lesser-known' shopping typologies as a contributionto local, regional and national historyBy pursuing these questions and objectives, I will investigate the architectural and design intentions ofeach case study while gaining insights into the day-to-day experience of the shopping public over time.In turn, this research aims to influence the future of public-oriented shopping spaces.