Tour Day 2022
Tour Day is devoted to the appreciation of modern architecture in the United States. Events focus on architecture + design of the Modern Movement, and are hosted by Docomomo chapters, partners, + leading voices in preservation. It’s the only national program of its kind. Each year has a different theme and the tour takes place in October.
Photo: Springtime at Northland, 1960s. Courtesy of Southfield Historical Society.
After the presentation, Lange joined 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, Director of the Marshall Fredericks Museum, discussed 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, AIA CARB, 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, discussed 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, sold copies of Alexandra’s book,
Meet Me by the Fountain, for sale at the Southfield Public Library throughout the evening.
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, Michigan
Bruce Kopytek, AIA NCARB, Chief Architect at Contour Companies, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Moderator
Deborah Lubera Kawsky, Art Historian and President, Docomomo US/Michigan
Presented by Docomomo US/Michigan in collaboration with the
Southfield Public Library, the Southfield Historical Society, and Book Beat.
Schedule
5:30pm – Refreshments
6:00pm – Presentations
7:15pm – Panel Discussion and Q&A
This event is part of Docomomo US Tour Day 2022.
For additional images of the mall then and now, click here
For additional images of the event, click here
The Michigan Chapter of Docomomo US and our friends at the Southfield Public Library and the Southfield Historical Society partnered 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 started 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 walked 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 freedomand exclusion, consumerism and community.