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'''Victor Gruen''' (1903-1980) was an [[Austrian]] architect and planner who lived and worked in the [[United States]] between 1938 and 1968, and who achieved renown as a pioneering designer and promoter of shopping malls.

'''Victor Gruen''' (1903-1980) was an [[Austrian]] architect and planner who lived and worked in the [[United States]] between 1938 and 1968, and who achieved renown as a pioneering designer and promoter of shopping malls.

Gruen was born Victor Grunbaum in a middle-class Jewish family in [[Vienna]]. He trained as an architect but also devoted much of his youthful energy to producing ansd acting in political cabarets in the interwar Austrian capital. As a Jew, and a known social democrat, he appreciated the danger he was in following the German [[Anschluss]] of Austria in 1938 - he was briefly arrested by the Nazi authorities and released only after friends gave a bribe - and fled the country with his wife, travelling via [[Zurich]] and [[London]] to [[New York City]]. There he recommenced working as an architect, initially on high-class Fifth Avenue shops. During the war (in which he applied to join, but was  rejected by, the US Army), he became a naturalised American citizen and changed his surname to Gruen.

Gruen was born Victor Grunbaum in a middle-class Jewish family in [[Vienna]]. He trained as an architect but also devoted much of his youthful energy to producing ansd acting in political cabarets in the interwar Austrian capital. As a Jew, and a known social democrat, he appreciated the danger he was in following the German [[Anschluss]] of Austria in 1938 - he was briefly arrested by the Nazi authorities and released only after friends gave a bribe - and fled the country with his wife, travelling via [[Zurich]] and [[London]] to [[New York City]]. There he recommenced working as an architect, initially on high-class Fifth Avenue shops. During the war (in which he applied to join, but was  rejected by, the US Army), he became a naturalised American citizen and changed his surname to Gruen.

He rapidly achieved prominence as a retail architect (a branch of architecture somewhat looked down on in what was still a rather snobbish profession), designing clothing stores for the California-based chain Grayson's in the early 1940s and subsequently for the [[Detroit]] dapartment store Hudson's. However, he made his name with a depatrment store for the [[Los Angeles]] department store Milliron's, which

He rapidly achieved prominence as a retail architect (a branch of architecture somewhat looked down on in what was still a rather snobbish profession), designing clothing stores and department stores for retail chains. He then moved on to designing shopping centres, taking these to a new level of size and sophistication. In March 1954 the Northland Center near [[Detroit]], developed for the local department store, Hudson's, with one hundred shops and its own road system, was opened to huge acclaim; it was at the time the largest modern shopping centre in America. Gruen built on this success to design the Southdale Center, near Minneapolis, which opened in 1956; this was the first enclosed or indoor centre on any scale (and as such the first of the modern 'shopping malls'), with two department stores and seventy other shops surrounding a huge covered court.

[[Category:Urban Planning]]

[[Category:Urban Planning]]