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Public image. After the turn of the 20^th century department stores discovered that there was more to getting customers in the door than with signs, placards and name recognition. They realized that these signs and placards helped in obtaining a more important and more powerful goal. The idea of public image was a bi-product of service. Service was “a recognition by merchants that they had some obligation to care for and cater to the needs of customers as well as of workers” (Leach 122). Unlike Mr. Wanamaker’s definition of a ‘new kind of store’ which was based on principally for profit but also in response to the needs of the people, service became less about need and more about luxury and the completely unnecessary. Service became more about music, movies and paintings versus the initial customer service and return policies. “Service, then, along with other strategies of enticement, helped give to the sphere of consumption and independent character and a definite set of values” (Leach 147). In other words, it led to department stores establishing what we today know as a brand, trademark or franchise. The advertisements, the signs, the service all are pieces to a puzzle that the consumer is trying to put together. When finished, the consumer has an overall picture of what the company is about. It is this unique picture or image that is so powerful is allowed the consumer to care less about how things were made and who made them and more about where they were actually buying (Leach 150). In short, a department stores public image (reputation) became the keystone for their success. (Just letting you know, Destiny’s keystone is green)

Bullied by Commodity

”For the private individual, the place of dwelling is for the first time opposed to the place of work.” (8)

Being contemporary individuals, it is easy for us to see where you work and where you live as being distinctly separate. In fact, sometimes we may feel as if the interrelationship between work and living spaces and “communal living” are new ideas. However, looking at this reading in more depth, I find myself realizing the obvious. Life was always about communal living and working where you lived, and things such as the city, the arcade, the eventual development of the mall, and even the industrial revolution all really changed the way that relationship worked. We always think of all those things and their impact on society and economy and the general growth of the world, but we never seem to think about it on the level of how the work/live relationship was drastically altered.

I find it very intriguing that although the world may seem to be heading in the direction of developed communities with individuals constantly being “individuals” and living private, restricted lives, the architecture profession seems to be heading in the direction of communal; sustainable; working to live, not living to work direction. Maybe it is just those with the “global warming” save the world mentalities, but it seems to make perfect sense to me; especially if the world could operate so smoothly for so long with these things we call “commodities” why do we need them.

This brings us to the emergence of the “entertainment industry” with all its glamour and commodity; commodity being the primary selling point. I understand the point of “commodities,” and that is the only thing I can really say. I don’t know how to argue against them, because as we had said in our last discussion, we all still shop at Wal-mart and Target, even if with disagree with the overall idea. Why is that? Is it because of commodity? That said, I really want to touch on what Alex mentioned in response to this reading. If technology is the thing we remember and commodities come and go and are forgotten, why are we allowing ourselves to be bullied by commodity? Why do we let commodities dictate and influence everything we are doing, when past experience has taught us that technology is where the real lasting influence lies?

arcade distractions

In Paris, Benjamin recalls trade and traffic as two components of the street prior the advent of the arcades. The arcades are instrumental in separating traffic from trade and transforming trade in the arcades into a continuous ‘arousal of desires.’ This is very different from the earlier more informal commercial activity on the street. The arcade becomes an architectural interface that mediates the consumers interaction with commodities on display. Linear vaulted covered archways homogenize and streamline the variation that typically between adjacent vendors. The arcades offer a ‘uniform diversity’ which is a technique practitioners use today when designing malls and entertainment destinations, the consumer has options yet the larger brand maintains a strong identity. Displays of luxurious goods are also instrumental in visually arousing the consumer. The effort taken by vendors to create a fantastic spectacle becomes more important than the use or quality of commodities marketed. Watching-‘the state of distraction’ is the primary activity in the arcade versus the actual exchange of goods.

When architecture was dumped

The arcades can be associated with the origins of the modern day mall. These structures “which are house no less than street” allowed shopping to continue even when the weather was bad and when the sun went down (Benjamin 10). They eliminated the component of traffic from these streets which allowed the consumer to consider themselves part of a mass (Benjamin 43). But while arcades facilitated this evolution of shopping, the comprehension that “construction plays the role of the subconscious” facilitated the revolution (Benjamin 3).

The arcade, which took advantage of the new construction technologies - iron and glass - looked towards architecture to help exponentially enhance the shopping experience. Soon the architecture not only became part of the merchandise but was the merchandise. The look and location began factoring in consumers decisions to purchase. “The consumer cannot appreciate these degrees [quality of material]; he judges only according to his senses” (Benjamin 51). Architecture, the double and triple story spaces, endless hallways and glass roofs, appealed to these senses.

The arcade was the source of architectures influence in retail and was also the place where is got dumped. The realization or as Walter Benjamin states “turning point in history,” that displaying goods “from floor to ceiling…to garland his façade like a flagship,” plays into the subconscious even more and made architecture the background dressing. “Soon the name of the shopkeeper, the name of his merchandise, inscribed a dozen times on placards that hung on the doors and above the windows, beckoned from all sides,” is all the consumer noticed (Benjamin 60).

The Arcades can be associated with the origins of the modern day mall. Unfortunately, the modern mall forgot about how architecture once appealed to the subconscious. It is architects jobs to push aside names and placards and let architecture regain the led roll again.

Window Shopping & the Corrirdor…a thing of the past?

“In those parts of the city where the theaters and public walks…are located, where therefore the majority of foreigners live and wander, there is hardly a building without a shop. It takes only a minute, only a step, for the forces of attraction to gather; a minute later, a step further on, and the passerby is standing before a different shop…” Benjamin (60)



With the birth of the arcade we can begin to see a new type of interaction between the customer and the merchandise. Prior to the arcade the idea of “window shopping” was nearly non-existent. This new style of shopping has directly influenced the architectural format for the consumer market and we can see this come embodied in the formal layout of the arcade itself. The space of the long corridor allows the consumer to casually walk through the building and see the selection of stores in their entirety. This subsequently calls for the implementation of the storefront window and allows the entire façade of the store to become advertising space. When we compare the arcade with the mall of today we can clearly see the evolution that took place of the past hundred years. In layout of the modern mall or even the modern mega-mall, organizes the retail space in two long rows. Although the malls of the modern world have grown, the “arcade” like corridors are still as predominate as our culture’s tendency to casually window shop.

In researching the plans for Destiny USA, we can see a revolution in the shopping mall industry. The original format of the arcade corridor is nearly exempt from the architectural layout of Destiny’s primary shopping areas. The creators of Destiny are focused on creating a new experience in the shopping culture. Instead of viewing the mall as a long narrow line of displays, the mall becomes a more hands-on encompassing experience in shopping and learning. Instead of occupying one of two spaces, corridor or shop, Destiny will create an entire indoor world of entertainment, food, and of course retail.

The Age of Display

In Walter Benjamin’s, The Arcades project, he describes many different and almost unrelated topics concerning the world of architecture and art, and brings them together in the finale, just as the reader would be led to believe the topics have nothing in common. The writings of barricades on the wide Paris boulevards, widening of those same boulevards, World Exhibitions, and the new artistic technique of photography all have seemingly nothing in common, but in fact are part of a larger, broader idea.
Each seemingly different topic described by Benjamin, exemplifies the people of that time’s departure from older ideals and techniques, and how they embraced the changing culture of their day. Many devices and products that had once only been considered for an audience of one and unique were now being considered for mass market appeal. A portrait which consisted of a long, slow process, became faster and easier with the introduction of the photograph and made available the same image for multiple consumers. The introduction of these new arcades allowed people to finally display the works and products they would soon be selling to the consumers. This phenomenon began with the introduction of the before mentioned World Exhibitions, where creators had the opportunity to show off their works to a much larger scale. Before the age of television and the internet, consumers would be given the chance to view many products available to them.

Revolutionizing the retail industry

“….so that the arcade is a city, a world in miniature, in which customers will find everything they need…..the arcades are a place of refuge for the unprepared, to whom they (arcades) offer a secure, if restricted, promenade…” Benjamin p. 31

There is no doubt that arcades are the first example of the modern day mall; the accentuated double loaded corridors naturally light from above with the controlled chaos that is the public shopping within. Walter Benjamin describes the beginnings of the arcade as a conglomeration of new construction techniques as well as a need for refuge for vendors as well as consumers. The first arcades transformed the retail industry forever. Instead of individual shops, the arcade created a completely new environment, “a world in miniature.” The idea that a person now had the ability to satisfy a multitude of consumer tasks all in one place was revolutionary. Not only was it revolutionary for the customer, but the retailer as well. They now had the opportunity for maximum exposure to the public, where as before the arcade, a visit by the consumer would most likely be more purposeful. The arcade set the stage for a complete shift in the retail industry; business competition grew due to close proximity, advertising was now a must to attract new customers, and caual window shopping was now possible. The arcade was step one, then eventually today’s typical mall, and now the mega malls of the future. Although the scale ranges from a miniature to city, to a project as enormous as Destiny USA, the principles of the arcade are the same. These basic principles of convince, sequence and the public are the driving force behind mall design today. How can we make our mall as enjoyable, accessible, and prepared as possible for every type of customer we may encounter….?

Modern Arcade Loses Corporate Sponsor

Reading of les arcades de Paris, I am reminded of another little marketplace called Underground Atlanta, que j'ai flanné many times. It is an interesting little place, an underground arcade meant to preserve the old downtown Atlanta by excavating to the ground plane of years-gone-by and then lining the underground streets with Johnny Rockets, Sweet Factory, and other such enterprises. In the street itself, covered not with glass but with rocks, pavement, steel, and maybe some dirt, are vendors on wheels, selling name bracelets, airbrush portraits, and other memorable knick-knacks. On the corners and in the central intersection of the main street and the most prominent alley are typically the arts: street musicians, commissioned musicians, and jugglers. You would never assume (at least the proprietors would never want you to assume) that above you bustled a modern city of a half-million inhabitants.

Underground Atlanta is faltering. It is an underground mall; stuffy, badly lit. That is the schtick of the place, nevertheless it remains unappealing. It was mostly a place to kill time before or after going to the World of Coke across the plaza, but now the World of Coke has moved farther south by Centennial Olympic Park, CNN, and the new Georgia Aquarium. The major corporate/tourist backbone for the arcade has disappeared and with it, the customers. Atlantans remorse the impending demise of Underground Atlanta because in the American context, something like Underground Atlanta, essentially a mall but with a forced history, is unique and represents "the little guys." Of course, Johnny Rockets and Sweet Factory will carry on (that's the beauty of franchising, Mouret's dream not yet dreamt), but oddly enough, it was the mall itself, the underground arcade which was held dear, not the stores or storeowners inside it.

Arcades to Mega-malls

Benjamin Walter describes the ‘arcades’ as if they are an architectural product of society during this time period, and really puts into perspective the fact that architecture is an ever changing discipline which has many disguises. He describes the streets as “…always besieged by carriages” and continues to elaborate about “the hazards to which pedestrians were exposed…” It is from these dangers that led to the birth of the arcade, which immediately set the underlying framework for a new type of consumer-retailer relationship which we still experience today.

One particularly interesting condition noted by Walter is the development of the rudimentary idea of the arcade to later on creating a cultural icon which thrives on the conditions set up by this type of architecture. In the most elementary arcade one would simply walk on the bare earth, but as earth turned to mud and retailers began to speculate about the profits to be made from these arrangements, the notion of the arcade was reconfigured. While reading the language in which Walter uses to describe these arcades, it becomes hard to ignore that our mall configurations today are based around the same basic principles. From an architectural standpoint he describes “reigns of enormous glass-paned roof” as well as floor plans which are designed so that “they can be taken in, so to speak, at a glance”. It becomes no secret that these arcades are arranged for one purpose only, to lure in buyers and keep you there long enough to purchase something. Walter notes that one “judges only according to his[her] senses”, meaning that perhaps the quality of the product does not matter so much as the display and environment in which you place your buyers. Although the mega-malls of today may be filled with water parks, aquariums, and golf courses, in principle they closely relate to the arcades in which Walter describes in his passages.

Arcades,malls,mega malls, whats next?

In Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, he is mostly explaining about arcades and their roles in people’s lives and the economy. The arcades were used as a place where corporate markets would all get together and sell items to customers. Arcades changed the feel of the retail experience because instead of retail stores being in an individual entity, arcades bought stores all together into one place and under one roof with a variety of different retail stores. Arcades also bought a different people throughout the same and different neighborhoods into one same gathering space and interaction between these people would happen. Eventually these arcades became malls which contain department stores, individual stores as well as people, which were all put together into one roof. It changed the way the economy worked as well as the architecture involved in creating these spaces in arcades.
The 20th Century malls are similar the arcades but bigger. However, the 21st Century malls such as DestinyUSA and the South China Malls have the same ideas as arcades and malls, but they are way bigger and are like arcades on HGH and Winstrol together. It’s a scary thought to think how much energy will be used to upkeep these places as well as what the next step would be after the mega malls. Sooner or later, it wouldn’t surprise me that somewhere in the near future, these malls would be so big, it would become its own city.

bread and circuses

Benjamin anticipates how “architecture, with the first appearance of iron construction, begins to outgrow art” (5). He talks about the “rivalry begins between builder and decorator” and “the constructive principle gains its domination of architecture” (4). This goes back to our question from the last class of how to critique the architecture of the mall and what the role of the architect could be. “Spatial products,” like malls and skyscrapers, in which square footage and processes of exchange run the project, make the designer focus primarily on the technologies of creating spaces, which sometimes short-changes the quality of the environment. And when individual stores receive the bulk of environmental design, the experience of buying that merchandise increases the value and fetish-factor of the merchandise itself.

Arcades began through the covering of existing streets with iron and glass. The architect then designed interior facades and floors that complemented the class of the customers and the desires of the shopkeepers. I think that these attributes, along with the displays of the shops, created the allure of the arcade. Environmental design is perhaps receiving more attention in Destiny USA, though it’s more kitsch and less sophisticated, so that the value of the place increases by amplifying the “phantasmagoria, which a person enters in order to be distracted” (5).

On a side note, we’ve begun a look at the typology of commercial establishments, which may be a way of critiquing mall-kitecture: arcade, department store, mega-mall, etc. Arcades evolved from something that existed, the street. Malls are a kind of conglomeration of different types that are placed according to mode of transportation. This evolution probably reflects the evolution of transportation, cultural differences, and the business of goods exchange.

A Real Retail

“Specifics of the department store: the customers perceive themselves as a mass; they are confronted with an assortment of goods; the take in all the floors at a glance; they pay fixed prices; they can make exchanges” (Benjamin 50).

The prevailing state of retail architecture, international commercial construction strategies of malls, necessitates a transformation. The ubiquitous sales envelope needs an expansion of its spatial strategies. Too much capital has been channeled to the support of limited tools, most often manipulated by developers, unaware of depth of architectural possibility. A conservative palette of materials has been tirelessly re-constructed in the same commercial forms. A retail Architecture could be the result of a transformation of current retail models. An increased acceptance, between Architecture and spatial producing economic powers, is made necessary by the lack of amenity and resource presented by the current retail forms. Re-thinking the idea of envelope and commercial frame, and re-investing Architecture’s rigor in dealing with the idea of shopping, the middle class, and consumerism is the trajectory.



in response to World Exhibitions and Their Legacy:

With the rise of the middle class comes a shift of focus within the industrial apparatus, or perhaps its creation following the death of cottage industry. European passages are initially presented as a collection of autonomous commercial ventures, the unified control of which allows for the formation of a ruling body and the homogenization necessary under this system of control; this provides the means of change in the realm of production. Machines enabling mass consumption and the masses demanding products are inseparable and occur simultaneously. Equally inseparable are the ideas of technology and commodity, an idea manifested in the most popular and renowned products. Is the iphone more commodity or technology? As consumer’s we are encouraged not to care as smart and sexy advertising demonstrates this bundle of connective capabilities and software applications.

World Exhibitions and their Legacy

What I found most interesting in the Walter reading is his discussion of world exhibitions. Walter claims that “world exhibitions are the places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish” (7). This may be true, but such a statement (and his later discussion) seems to degrade world exhibitions to something with no more value than a department store displaying its latest and greatest merchandise. My impression of world exhibitions—or at least their legacy—has been of a place where countries, under the pretense of impressing each other, present their latest and greatest technology.

When I think of the World Exhibitions, I don’t think of shawls or the “[glorification] of the exchange value of a commodity” (7), I think of Paxton’s Crystal Palace in 1851 demonstrating the new uses of glass and wrought iron. I think of the Eiffel Tower demonstrating unprecedented height. Overall, I think of grand demonstrations of technology that are meant to show the world the future of what is possible.

However, I concede that I have never been to a World’s Exhibition. It may very well be that when the common man found themselves walking around the Crystal Palace, maybe the smells of perfume drew more attraction than the glory of a new light and open architectural framework. Ultimately what I wonder is: are World Exhibitions really less about technology and more about commodity, or is the technology aspect simply what finds itself worthy of remembrance due to its lasting influence?

Umm...

Paris is a decent example of our contemporary malls. The arcade is seen as the catalyst that revolutionized the shopping experience. Like Emile Zola, this article brings into perspective the experience of the shopper in space. “The passage is a city, a world in miniature” the experience of the design is why Paris is such an idealized shopping center. These techniques are still applied today. Like the arcades in Paris, the 21st century mall is too “a center of commerce in luxury items.” Today’s malls are reinventing themselves to become mega centers like those of capital cities around the world. Destiny USA is one such example. The mall has become a new lifestyle center with amenities that supercede traditional (mall) archetypes. Destiny USA is one such project that will begin to revolutionize an entire city. The iconography of Paris as depicted in Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project is seen in the contemporary mall. The proof is in projects like Destiny. Reminiscent of the shopping centers in Paris, the contemporary mall is exploring new art forms that will be studies eras from now. In another 75 years it will be interesting to see what role the mall plays in the urban environment and what lessons will be taken from projects like those in Paris and even Syracuse, NY.

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THOUGHTS
The architectural descriptions of the arcades are highly seductive. Elevated “sky”-streets, whose “passage is a city, a world in miniature”, composed of a classless society. It is a utopian vision. The initial arcades were a joint venture; a “private” partnership that projected a collective identity. It seems that initially they were “phalansteries,” [groups of people living together in community; free of extra regulation and holding property in common]. People lived in or adjacent to their workplace. Unregulated public access was permitted. Public space flowed through these privately constructed zones. Exterior and interior was blurred. This is interesting because in “spatial products” similar to Carousel Mall the line between regulated and unregulated or public and private space is clearly drawn. PHYSICALLY this boundary is crossed upon immediate entrance to a facility, within the confines of the “revenue envelope”. Could entry halls or atriums extend the “public” street inside, uninterrupted spatial flows? Could we achieve leisure/shopping architecture similar to the Arcades of Paris?

CONCERNS
How is cyberspace regulated within public spaces? Should Starbucks infiltrate exterior public space with its private, “locked” wireless networks?
[http://www.coin-operated.com/projects/wifiliberator] – EYEBEAM OpenLab

Class in a food court? How bazaar

Walter Benjamin’s The Arcade Project is really telling of how a very simplistic piece of architecture, the arcade, did so much to change the retail experience because it did not only support space making, but as well supported the economic. The arcade provided a simple but somewhat luxurious and novel experience that was innovative in its use. It helped elevate the marketplace and somewhat condense it into one giant destination gallery of shops, a department store on steroids perhaps? One could argue that the arcade was an idea played off of a street covered oriental bazaar. What is somewhat humorous is that the shopping experience left the street and now with projects such as Destiny and the South China Mall, street life is what the mega mall experience is drifting back towards.
Another important fact to recognize is that the arcade was the first step towards the modern day mall. It enabled the shoppers to have a heightened experience creating an enclosed social setting and gathering place that was uninhibited by the elements. This fact stays true for today as modern malls are not only economic but a gathering place to meet, hang out, and even hold a class in the middle of a food court.