09/21/2026
From the Archives: Metrocenter Mall 🏛️
Take a look at this hand-drawn rendering of Metrocenter's interior — sketched during the design phase, before a single wall was built. You can make out the court leading to the Diamond's store, a drink kiosk, and shopfronts, all rendered in ink with little figures added to give a sense of scale and crowd.
If you grew up in Phoenix, there's a good chance the real thing was part of your story too: the ice rink, the food court shaped like an airplane, the sheer size of the place. When it opened in 1973, it was the first two-level, five-anchor mall built anywhere in the U.S., designed by Robert Fairburn of the Phoenix firm Flatow, Moore, Bryan & Fairburn. Fairburn gave the mall's entrances their signature look: bold, upswept concrete forms inspired by Le Corbusier's work in Chandigarh, India — a piece of international architecture reinterpreted for the desert.
Drawings like this one are exactly what AAF's Archives Committee works to preserve — because once a structure like this is gone, the design record is all that's left to tell the story of how Phoenix grew into the city it is today.
Did you spend time at Metrocenter? Tell us your favorite memory below.
