As described previously, Fairfax, Virginia has been a fast growing suburban area for a few decades now. As Fairfax began growing, Fair Oaks indoor mall opened. It struggled in the first few years with many vacancies, but began to fill up over the following years. This sparked growth for more shopping places to spring up nearby. Today, this area of Fairfax is a huge hub of shopping centers, big boxes, and malls.
Fair Oaks Mall is an isolated mall in the middle of its site. It is surrounded by a sea of surface parking lots and parking garages. It has a street that circles around the entire site, which makes it very car accessible for getting to any part of the mall, but it acts as a barrier to pedestrians, particularly in combination with the vast surface parking areas that must be traversed.
Fair Oaks Mall on its site
The mall is like a big box sitting in the middle of a vast paved parking lot, with no connection to its context. The mall itself is sunk into the ground because the site has a slight slope to it.
Building sections
On one side, one enters from the ground level directly to the second floor, while on the other side enterting on the ground floor lands you on the bottom. The only programs at the mall are food and retail.
Programmatic sectionsProgrammatic plans
The restaurants are clustered together in a couple sections by the entrances. The shape of the building itself is very intriguing.
Fair Oaks building
There are few (if any) orthogonal angles, and the shapes seem to be somewhat molded, like pieces were pushed and pulled in many directions. At the same time, the main interior hallways are not specifically straight lines, but implied straight paths created from angles.
The interior organization is one primary hallway with smaller hallways poking out along the way. Where these smaller hallways meet the main one, the connections open up and become larger spaces. Practically, it enables people to see and walk around corners with more ease. Spatially, they create these moments along a path where the spaces open up and becomes a comfortable, light, voluminus space. These main hallways are layered directly on top of each other, and most of the smaller hallways line up as well. When one approaches these spatial moments, the space opens exponentially, because in addition to the space opening up horizontally, it opens up vertically meeting with the other level.
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