Architecture: the “by-product of data and logistics”

One element I find immensely interesting between Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight and Easterling’s “Introduction” is the way in which Easterling portrays architecture compared to Zola’s highly specific descriptions of Au Bonheur des Dames, which we immediately understand to be a product of architecture born from highly specific spatial organizations and advertising. Easterling describes architecture as “… a technology – the medium of an open platform storing both structure and content. The information it stores, as both data and persuasion, is literally a product, property, or currency.” Although Zola is not fundamentally concerned with architecture in her story, they way in which she purposely expresses the intricate workings and processes which govern the nature of Au Bonheur des Dames puts Easterling’s ideology about data and architecture into perspective. Zola illustrates the store as a fine tuned machine as “it was all organized and regulated with mechanical precision…”( Zola 16), and it is through this that architecture is understood as something beyond form and appearance, but a discipline which is capable of adaptation because it is a “by-product of data and logistics” (Easterling, Keller). Even though Emile Zola does not purposefully write about architecture in her story, by using highly descriptive language she inherently brings to fruition some of the arguments made by Easterling.

Another interesting condition which becomes evident in Zola’s story is the way in which Au Bonheur des Dames uses advertisement and innovative marketing ploys to drive other companies alike out of business. While reading this portion of the story a parallel between the way in which Au Bonheur des Dames is run very clearly relates to the function of ‘big box’ retailers in today’s society. Today these big retailers are capable of offering much lower prices than smaller companies simply because they can afford to buy in large quantities. Companies such as Target, Best Buy, and Staples have in a sense destroyed the possibility for smaller companies to compete because of lower prices combined with innovative marketing and advertisement strategies. In Zola’s story, Au Bonheur des Dames is essentially depicted as one of these ‘big box’ retailers which always has its “…finest articles out, with materials arranged around them, in a veritable fairground display to catch the girls’ eyes” (Zola 26). The strategies and ideologies of this company seem to be the root in which many present day corporations revolve around, and quite possibly even stem from in the future.