Banal Series #18 Food Courts at Shopping Malls

The food court area of a shopping mall offers shoppers respite – hauling bags through throngs of people – a place to engage in a sensible, and ultimately, convenient meal. There are choices here. The hungry cue up in front of neon marquees and sneeze guard sconced counters. A veritable polyglot of types and styles of food are offered. This is, after all, within the confines of a modern shopping mall: a bastion of, and well vetted steward of the most ubiquitous of banal things.

A visitor to a mall food court knows, precisely, what to expect.

The vendors: well known chains, tropified and prepackaged, are fixed constants at the food court. The variable comes down to a composite of personal moods and tastes, compounded by a fluctuating algorithm of line lengths. Once the choice is made, trays, familiar to the consumer from approximately twelve years of school aged usage, are carried to the seating area. Chairs around tables of various size and length, and booths framed by planter boxes filled with artificial plants pock the food court in a tessellated fractal. The entirety of the area is shrouded in the cacophonous din of hundreds of wills interacting in dozens of conversations.

Logistically, the food court sits as an out of the way pocket of mall traffic. A sort of architectural fistula of rest and regrouping.