Chia Mesa
cityLAB and Roger Sherman Architecture + Urban Design

CHIA MESA transforms the strip mall into a prototype and a recovery strategy for Phoenix. Rapid urbanization of the metro area—its unbridled horizontal expansion into the outlying landscape---has destroyed not only its potential agricultural productivity, but its civic identity as well. With CHIA MESA, a new image-ability emerges for the city as a whole---one whose morphology ironically recollects that of the landscape it is rapidly consuming. Instead of being anonymously absorbed into the endless and undifferentiated urban fabric (Phoenix’s own version of Banham’s Plains of Id), the scenario we propose envisions the next generation of strip malls as climactically and socially “cool hotspots” in an arid field.