Namba Parks

 

Shopping malls are true cathedrals of consumption, especially in a country wherein many people claim shopping as a hobby.

Most are featureless boxes, but a few have had some serious money spent on their architecture.

Namba parks is one such location, and from one angle one might understand the name "parks" as having some rekevance.

However, most visitors will see a dark canyon with beckoning lights enticing people into magical lands where things you don't need call out to be bought...

The canyon metaphor is also literal.

The architect, American Jon Jerde, modelled the architecture on the sandstone canyons of the Colorado Plateau in the American Southwest.

As a photographer, I like it.

Jerde has also designed another couple of shopping malls in Japan that I like: Riverwalk in Kokura, and Canal City in Fukuoka.

I notice common elements to all three...

Namba Parks is my least favourite, though that may be simply because I have visited it less than the other two.

I was about to write that after multiple visits to these malls I had never actually bought anything, but then I remembered that Canal City used to have a Wendys that I visited once, and Riverwalk has a Freshness Burger and a map museum that I had visited...

As well as the shopping mall, Namba Parks consists of a cinema, and an office building and a residential building. The rooftop gardens don't seem to get much use...

I currently only have one post on Riverwalk, here, and one on Canal City, here.

The previous post in this series exploring Namba, Osaka, was on sights seen between Namba Hips and Namba Parks.

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