Inventor of the modern shopping mall and designer of the first outdoor pedestrian mall in the U.S. He influenced the urban-revitalization projects of Fort Worth, Texas, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Fresno, California, during the 1950s and 1960s.
He studied architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He was employed by Peter Behrens during the 1930s. He relocated to the United States after Germany conquered Austria in 1938.
His firm designed over 50 shopping malls by the mid-1970s, including the 800,000 square-foot Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota, the nation's first enclosed shopping mall.
His family was residing in Vienna when he was born. He married four times.
He and Le Corbusier were contemporaries.
