What meanings do spaces take on when they are extrapolated to a different socio-political context? If in the 1960s shopping malls played a dubious role in the life of the American suburban dweller—creating communal spaces while promoting a culture of consumption—what were their intended and actual socio-political functions in the Tehran of the 1970s? My essay will investigate these questions by exploring the genesis and development of the modern shopping mall in Iran in the last two decades of the Pahlavi reign (1960-79). Through an analysis of architectural representations and the physical/social space of shopping malls, I argue that rather than a straightforward replication, the creation of malls should be understood as part of an effort to appropriate images and spaces of modernity. I show how in its Iranian manifestation, the shopping mall has retained the core paradoxical function of the original American model—oppressive and liberating, a tool of social engineering and the locus of a subversive culture. I first analyze the textual and visual representations of the shopping mall in the discourse of urban planning, focusing specifically on the master plan of Tehran, prepared in the late 1960s with the collaboration of the American-Austrian architect and urban planner Victor Gruen, often considered as the mastermind of shopping malls in the US. Drawing on Gruen’s theories and designs, Tehran’s master plan was conceived as an agglomeration of ten sprawling urban towns, each with a commercial and administrative center. The design of these unrealized centers provides an interesting case study of how the original forms acquired new meanings in the process of transplantation in a new context. I then analyze the architecture and social context of Golestan Shopping Center, a popular mall of Tehran to the present day. Located in an upper middle class quarter, Golestan Center is a rare project planned and constructed in accordance with the guidelines of the pre-revolutionary master plan. Moreover, the building’s architecture, designed by a famous Iranian architect of the time, Kamran Diba, is modern but imbued with references to traditional architecture, which adds another layer to its cultural significance. I will conclude with reflections on the social context of such projects after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when the spaces created to entice the modern middle class under the Pahlavi monarchy began to act as the locus of a subversive culture.