Rehabilitating shopping centers: a practice of cultural precision
The rehabilitation of a shopping center is never a neutral operation, especially when it comes to iconic buildings conceived with a strong symbolic dimension. In La Vaguada, for example, the challenge was not only technical but ideological. Its author, César Manrique, did not design a commercial container but an urban oasis. His architecture sought balance between the natural and the artificial, between the dense city and visual respite. Forty years later, L35 Architects has engaged with that legacy without nostalgia but with respect. A new narrative was not imposed; the original one was refined. The result is a green, open heart that reinterprets the Mediterranean plaza and restores the shopping center’s role as a shared place—not only of transaction but of belonging.
This is not an exception. In Maremagnum, a 1990s building designed by Viaplana and Piñón on Barcelona’s waterfront, the task was the opposite: to open what was born closed, to connect what was once isolated. The second floor was reconfigured for visual integration, terraces and viewpoints were opened, and physical as well as symbolic barriers were removed. The result is an architecture permeable to the sea, to the climate, and to outdoor life. It was not only about improving energy performance through reflective roofs or natural ventilation without air conditioning. It was also about rethinking the relationship between the center and its surroundings, between the built space and human experience.
Architectural circularity: updating without destroying
In architectural practice, to speak of sustainability without addressing circularity is misleading. And circularity is not just about recyclable materials. It means recognizing that cities and their buildings are finite resources, that demolishing to rebuild—except in extreme cases—is an outdated gesture, that the cleanest energy is the energy not consumed, and the greenest carbon is the carbon not emitted because what still works is not discarded. In this sense, renovating a shopping center is a profoundly contemporary act. It allows for the upgrading of energy efficiency, adaptation to new uses, and improvement of accessibility, while avoiding the waste of infrastructures and opportunities. Circular architecture is not a question of aesthetics or fashion, but of responsibility.
The Mediterranean as a model: an architecture of connection
Since its early projects, L35 has defended an open and permeable vision of commercial space, inspired by the Mediterranean model. Projects such as La Maquinista—pioneering at the time for proposing an open-air shopping center with greenery and an urban structure—already expressed this conviction: commerce should not be a closed capsule, but a living part of the city. Today, as this approach has become a reference and is replicated not only in Europe but across the world, we remain committed to an architecture that fosters connection, strolling, climate, and shared experience.
In this debate, the Mediterranean has something to contribute. The notion of Mediterranean architecture, which in the 20th century inspired figures such as Sert, Ponti, or Rudofsky, is not a style but an attitude. It is a way of understanding construction as an extension of the landscape, of conceiving the building not as an isolated object but as part of a network. Many shopping centers built in Europe in recent decades replicated Central European or American models. But warm climates and dense urban fabrics teach us that importing solutions is not enough. In the Mediterranean, vernacular architecture has always been open, ventilated, and shared—not out of romanticism, but out of efficiency, driven by climatic, economic, and social logic. Modern architecture drew from these lessons. Returning to those principles is not nostalgia but strategy. To rehabilitate through a Mediterranean lens means embracing porosity, shade, and the connection between indoors and outdoors. It means recognizing that a shopping center can also be a civic space, that comfort is measured not only in degrees Celsius but in quality of experience.
From shopping center to urban fabric
When a shopping center is well-renovated, its role in the city changes. It ceases to be solely a consumer destination and becomes an engine of urban regeneration. We see this in projects such as Paridis in Nantes, where L35 is involved in transforming a former hypermarket and its impermeable parking lot into a complete neighborhood with housing, offices, commerce, and public space. The operation does not replace but densifies, connects, and reactivates. The result is a new piece of city built upon the already built.
Renovation is not restoration: it is reinterpretation
Ultimately, renovating a shopping center is not about restoring a postcard from the past. It is about engaging in dialogue with its memory without fear of transformation. It is about combining respect and ambition, knowing how to read history without becoming trapped in it. And if, in doing so, we open the city, reduce environmental impact, and improve the lives of its inhabitants, then we are not only renovating a shopping center. We are making architecture.
