MacArthur Center is located in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. Downtown Norfolk is a medium-sized urban center alongside a waterfront, and is just one urban center in the Hampton Roads area (Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Hampton, and Newport News are others, all having their own multiple medium-sized urban centers). Norfolk historically wasn’t a very densely populated area, and lacked residences and a variety of program. In the late 1990′s, MacArthur Center was built to revitalize the downtown city center. It was intended to be a destination to draw people back into the city. Since its opening, surrounding buildings have become revitalized as well, and many high quality residences have migrated back into the urban center.
MacAthur Center in its site
MacArhur Mall and adjacent parking garages
MacArthur Mall is a downtown destination itself. It provides a large movie theatre, food court, good quality restaurants, parking, an ice skating rink during the winter, and retail for the city. One of the big draws for the mall was the entering of Nordstrom’s as an anchor store, as it is one of the few located in Virginia. People are drawn to the programmatic elements of the mall and are therefore brought into the downtown area.
While the mall has most of the program located inside, the building itself architecturally addresses the context and downtown areas.
MacArthur Center in its contextThe mall entrance within its context
There are pedestrian entrances on all sides of the mall, allowing those from the city to walk through or enter it, as well as providing a means for those in the mall to exit to the city. One of the main entrances is along a main road in the downtown area, and the entrance is modeled after a typical hotel entrance, with a drive through area and canopy.
MacArthur Center entrance
The entrance
This entrance announces the mall to the city. There are restaurants on the ground level and top level, with outdoor seating areas along the sidewalk on either side of this entrance, and there is restaurant outdoor seating on the level above the entrance overlooking the city.
MacArthur Mall plan
The MacArthur Center is a L-shaped building with interior hallways that mimic the building shape. There are two main hallways that extend out following the same orientation of the building, and their connection provides an interior vertical void that anchors the interior of the mall.
Pathways
Overlapping paths
Pathway collage
All three levels follow the same L-shape, and the main vertial circulation is via escalators and elevators at this vertical anchor point.
MacArthur diagrammatic section
From this anchor, one can see down the pathways of all the levels, and most of the program pieces are visible to each other.
MacArthur interior from anchor point
MacArthur interior from anchor point
See MacArthur Center components
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