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ARCHITECT OF EARLY EUROPEAN MALL DIES AT 91

Trailblazing architect Ralph Erskine died in March at age 91. His style is described as that of a true modernist who emphasized humanism over the rigidity of function.

Though British by birth, Erskine made a name for himself in Sweden, designing shopping centers, office space and residential buildings to withstand that country’s arctic temperatures. Many European developers credit Erskine with designing the Continent’s first shopping center, a mixed-use property called Shopping, in Luleå, Sweden.

Built in 1955, Shopping featured three underground levels of retail and seven aboveground levels of residential and office space. The original anchors included a cinema. At the time, merging entertainment and retail was a revolutionary idea. But “it was cold outside, and he thought people should move inside,” said Hans Tirsen, a partner at Luleå-based Tirsen & Aili Architects, which updated Shopping’s architecture in 1996. “He tried to create an indoor city with real streets and alleys.” The center is still thriving today, anchored by Swedish tenants H&M, Kapp Ahl, JC and Stadium. “His work is not as well known in the U.S. as it should be,” said Nate Cherry, vice president of Baltimore-based architecture firm RTKL, “but it helped to shape a group of architects famous for their humanist approach to design, especially Charles Moore and Joseph Esherick.”