Al Fernandez

Al Fernandez

When thinking about the Prudential/Copley commercial center, the connecting hallways are the first features that come to mind. Although these paths do have stores off to their sides, they seem to be constructed, primarily, with the express purpose of keeping people moving. I came to realize how difficult it is for someone to turn around in the middle of one of these pathways and go back where they came from. What keeps people moving forward, I think, is the hope of a larger space, of more breathing room. And some of these spaces are either open atriums where people can sit down (in the case of Copley, with green spaces and even a small fountain) or larger, more brand-name stores or restaurants that encourage people to stick around for longer.

I also really paid attention to empty spaces at the shopping centers, so much so that it made it the center of my sketch. Malls, at least to me, never seem to be fully completed—there’s always another further stage of development. This means that there are sections of the shopping centers that are almost completely deserted, even if there are stores lining up the paths. In Newbury Street, I noticed how one side of the street was under construction, leaving the other one looking, for the most part, untouched. It also seemed to me that the more commercial side of the street—the right-hand side, as portrayed in my map, seemed to have many more stores, while the left-hand side seems to be more residential in nature, even if there are stores at the ground and first levels.