Beyond the Valley of the Malls

Pop quiz: Which iconic image best represents Phoenix -- Camelback Mountain or a strip mall? If you said No. 2, you’re a winner.

Rather than dissing the popular building style, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art invited architects to submit proposals for transforming ugly-ass strips into exotic gathering spaces of the future. The results of the “Flip a Strip” competition will be announced during the SMoCA Fall Opening Party. You can speak with the designers afterward or sneak a peek at the museum’s other new exhibits, “Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting” and “Pedro Meyer’s Heresies,” the latter a retrospective of the Mexican artist’s groundbreaking digital photos that is running concurrently with exhibitions at 60 galleries around the world. “SMoCA was the only venue in the Southwest to get [the Meyer exhibit],” says museum representative Lesley Oliver, “and the participating museums get to keep the selections for their permanent collection.”