Design and Value: Spatial Form and the Economic Failure of a Mall

Real estate analysts have not had the tools to identify the functional problems of real estate because they have not focused on configuration. Space syntax is a way to represent, describe and evaluate spatial configurations or patterns created through building and urban design. Space syntax was used to systematically describe the configuration of a failed luxury shopping mall. Shape recognition techniques transform the plan into a mathematical network that can be analyzed. Network node parameters can be related to more traditional measures like occupancy and revenues by location. Thus revealed, the underlying spatial structure of the failed mall is compared to that of a similar but successful mall and its functional deficiencies identified.