the bottom line

Its become obvious that behind the colors, signs and displays there is a dark side to the gilts and glamour. This dark side revolves around one thing – the bottom line. Octave Mouret cares about how much it’s going to cost to feed his four hundred person fleet and how to squash the competition. When talking with Denise, Mouret proceeds by saying “and tell him [her uncle] that he will finally go under if he insists on his heaps of ridiculous, old fashioned goods” (Zola 55). From the consumer vantage point it’s about quality and price. “She wanted a dress, inexpensive but well made” (Zola 101). It is evident that these big box stores exchange quality for convenience. This quality is on multiply levels; in both product and service. I mention all this because I feel like the mega-malls and other institutions like Au Bonheur des Dames, have this same effect on the architecture. While Emile Zola indirectly talks about this aspect through her details, Keller Easterling directly tells about this relationship. He examples how “spatial products that attempt to avoid political entanglements also attempts to avoid error. Yet that belief often results in a much more massive failure or error” (10). So if the bottom line has undermined quality of architecture, and we as architects cannot fight it, what is there left to do? Are projects like DestinyUSA automatically destine to be big boxes? Not necessarily. The colors, signs and displays create an experience, only if architecture could usurp this experience than things might be able to change.