Victor Gruen facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Victor Gruen
Born	(1903-07-18)July 18, 1903 Vienna, Austria
Died	February 14, 1980(1980-02-14) (aged 76) Vienna, Austria
Education	Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
Occupation	Architect

Victor David Gruen, born Viktor David Grünbaum (July 18, 1903 – February 14, 1980), was an architect from Austria who later became an American citizen. He is famous for being a pioneer in designing shopping malls in the United States. He also had big ideas for making cities better. He wanted to put people first, not cars, in city centers. He even designed the first outdoor pedestrian mall in the United States, called the Kalamazoo Mall.

Victor Gruen: The Mall Architect

His Early Life and Journey

Victor Gruen was born on July 18, 1903, in Vienna, Austria. His family was Jewish. He studied architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He was a socialist and ran a small theater group from 1926 to 1934. There, he met Felix Slavik, who later became the mayor of Vienna. They became good friends.

As an architect, he worked for Peter Behrens. In 1933, Gruen opened his own architecture business in Vienna. His company focused on making shops and apartments look new.

When Germany took over Austria in 1938, he moved to the United States. He arrived in New York with very little money and did not speak English well. He changed his name to Gruen from Grünbaum. He started working as a draftsman, which is someone who draws building plans. After he successfully designed a leather shop, he got more jobs designing other stores.

Building Malls and City Spaces

In 1941, Gruen moved to Los Angeles. He became a US citizen in 1943. In 1951, he started his own architecture company, "Victor Gruen Associates." This company quickly became one of the most important planning offices.

After World War II, he designed the first outdoor shopping center in the suburbs. It was called Northland Mall near Detroit and opened in 1954. Because this project was a success, he designed his most famous work. This was the Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. It was the first enclosed shopping mall in the country.

Southdale Mall opened in 1956. Gruen wanted it to be the center of a complete community. He planned for apartments, schools, medical centers, parks, and a lake to be built around it. The mall itself was very successful, but the other parts of his plan were never built. Because he created the idea of the modern shopping mall, some people, like writer Malcolm Gladwell, have called him one of the most important architects of the 20th century.

By the mid-1970s, his company had designed over fifty shopping malls in the United States. Gruen also worked on a large housing project in Boston, Massachusetts, called Charles River Park. He also created a plan in 1956 to improve downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Most of this plan was not built. He also designed parts of a business complex in Beirut, Lebanon. Other malls he designed include Greengate Mall (1965) and Lakehurst Mall (1971).

In 1968, he moved back to Vienna. There, he worked on turning parts of the city center into pedestrian zones, where only people can walk, not cars. Some of these ideas were put into action, like in Kärntner Straße and Graben.

In 1978, Gruen gave a speech where he said that shopping malls had "ruined" his original ideas. He felt they had become something he did not intend. He died on February 14, 1980.

His Big Ideas and Influence

Gruen wrote a book called The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure. This book greatly influenced Walt Disney's ideas for city planning, especially his original concept for EPCOT.

Works

Shopping Malls Designed by Gruen

Shopping Centers Designed by Gruen Associates

Other Projects

• Millron's Westchester (later The Broadway Westchester), 1949, Westchester, Los Angeles, 1949
• Gateway Center (Newark), in Newark, New Jersey, 1970s

Selected Writings

• Victor Gruen, Larry Smith (1960) Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers New York: Reinhold
• Victor Gruen (1965) The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis. Diagnosis and Cure London: Thames and Hudson
• Victor Gruen (1973) Centers for the Urban Environment: Survival of the Cities. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold

In Media

• Victor Gruen is the name behind an Australian TV show called Gruen on the ABC. This show looks at how advertising works.

See Also