The typical indifference to them as places is what makes many of the shopping centres on the Milan-Venice highway nonplaces. This study, using Bergamo’s Orio Center as a laboratory window, proposes and tests a planning strategy, applicable to the other malls, too, that can turn these constructed non-places into architectural features that can interact with the formal structures of their surroundings, despite being dependent on the counterpoint between the self-regulated individuality of the object and their context.
Keywords: Autonomy; perimeter; inhabited wall