Docomomo-MI and the Southfield Historical Society will host a special event featuring author Alexandra Lange (Meet Me by the Fountain) and a panel discussion on the history and future of the Northland Center at Southfield Public Library (26300 Evergreen Road) on Thursday, October 6th, from 5:30pm to 7:45pm. The event is free and open to public. Seating is limited and a Registration is required.
Book Talk and In-Person Conversations about Michigan’s Northland Center
Thursday, October 6, 2022, 5:30 – 7:45pm
5:30pm – Refreshments
6:00pm – Presentations
7:15pm – Panel Discussion and Q&A
Admission is Free and Open to the Public.
Seating is Limited; Registration Required.
Keynote Speaker:
Alexandra Lange, Architecture and Design Critic and Author of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
Guest Speakers:
Megan McAdow, Director, Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Saginaw, MI
Bruce Kopytek, AIA NCARB, Chief Architect at Contour Companies, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Moderator
Deborah Lubera Kawsky, Art Historian and President, Docomomo-MI
Presented by Docomomo-MI in collaboration with Southfield Public Library, Southfield Historical Society, and Book Beat
Southfield Public Library
26300 Evergreen Road
Southfield, Michigan 48076
Full Press Release:
Join the Michigan Chapter of Docomomo US and our friends at the Southfield Public Library and Southfield Historical Society as we partner with Docomomo US for Tour Day 2022 to explore the history and future of shopping malls across the nation, including Michigan’s iconic Northland Center in Southfield.
The evening will start with a recorded talk by architecture critic Alexandra Lange, author of the newly released book Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall (Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2022). With an eye on the mall’s formative development in Michigan, including Victor Gruen’s pioneering Northland Center (1954), Lange’s illustrated talk will walk us through the atriums, escalators, and food courts of these disdained yet beloved, disappearing yet surviving spaces. In Lange’s perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction—environments of both freedom and exclusion, consumerism and community.
Following the recorded presentation, Lange will join us on Zoom for a conversation in the library featuring short in-person presentations by Megan McAdow and Bruce Kopytek on the past, present and future of the Northland Center site and a moderated panel discussion.
Megan McAdow, who is the Director of the Marshall Fredericks Museum, will discuss the role that art played in Michigan’s malls, focusing on Marshall Fredericks Boy and Bear sculpture. Originally located at Northland Center, the sculpture is one of several works that now welcome visitors to the Southfield Public Library.
Bruce Kopytek, who is the author of a forthcoming history of the J.L. Hudson’s company, Hudson’s: Detroit’s World-Famous Department Store (Editions BK LLC), and the Chief Architect at Contour Companies, will discuss Contour Companies’ multi-faceted project to redevelop the Northland site. Their work will feature the adaptive reuse of the original J.L. Hudson’s building and other historic Northland structures and signature elements.
Book Beat, an independent bookstore located in Oak Park, Michigan, will have copies of Alexandra’s book, Meet Me by the Fountain, for sale at the Southfield Public Library throughout the evening.
For more information, please contact Deborah Lubera Kawsky
Email: docomomo.mi@gmail.com
Phone: 734-751-4097
To Register:
https://southfieldlibrary.org/calendar-of-events/#/events/CKHz8KvInZ/instances/FOa9imTIM9/
The evening will start with a recorded talk about the mall’s formative development in Michigan, including Victor Gruen’s pioneering Northland Center. The illustrated talk will cover the atriums, escalators, and food courts of these disdained yet beloved, disappearing yet surviving spaces. Following the presentation, Lange will join the audience on Zoom for a conversation in the library featuring short in-person presentations by Megan McAdow, Director of the Marshall Fredericks Museum, and Bruce Kopytek, author and Chief Architect at Contour Companies, about the past, present and future of the Northland Center site and a moderated panel discussion.
Praise for Meet Me By The Fountain:
“Alexandra Lange is the poet laureate of mall culture, and her book is as delightful as a cold Orange Julius. Deeply researched and full of fascinating insights.” – Rachel Syme, The New Yorker
“Artfully elucidates the 70-year history of the mall… Lange asserts that malls, as ‘blank boxes in the middle of the big empty parking lots,’ can ‘serve as a land trust’ for the 21st century. This sounds like a stretch, but it proves to be true. Some malls die, but most don’t… Ms. Lange’s elegant conclusion: The mall is dead; long live the mall.” – Alex Beam, The Wall Street Journal
“Lange… might be the most influential design critic writing now.” – Eric Newman, LA Review of Books
Alexandra Lange is a design critic. Her essays, reviews and profiles have appeared in numerous design publications including Architect, Harvard Design Magazine, and Metropolis, as well as in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. She is a columnist for Bloomberg CityLab, and has been a featured writer at Design Observer, an opinion columnist at Dezeen, and the architecture critic for Curbed. She holds a PhD in twentieth-century architecture history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and has taught design criticism there and at the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Brooklyn.