Park and Ride?

Designing a shopping center in a city presents an obvious problem: how do you program a space surrounded by such a dynamic context? From one year to the next, major programmatic shifts are liable to take place, and predicting the growth of a shopping center becomes difficult when the only way to grow, apart from purchasing surrounding stores, is to expand upward.
Building outside the city, although it affords entirely new opportunities for urban mimicry, is necessarily a more ambitious endeavor. As we leave the city, we escape the infrastructural web that ensnares development and controls expansion. But by going “off the grid,” shopping centers take on a new responsibility: to mimic the urban environment from which they have been ripped, and to facilitate the construction of a new infrastructure of their own - automatons in their own right. But to function, shopping centers must contain more than just an empty shell of infrastructure. They need “stores.” However, in the proposed designs for the Park and Shop, “stores” becomes a generic label for a highly specific block of program, and in some of the schemes, the actual program takes a back seat to the gas station, which seems to act as both the center and the focus of the scheme.
So what happens when this type of scheme is employed within the city? Does the infrastructure (gas station, parking, etc.) then become subservient to the clear programmatic requirements of the shopping center, or does it become completely redundant (and thus entirely unnecessary) within the context of a city rich in infrastructure? Is the Park and Shop described by Longstreth an example of urban mimicry taking place within an infrastructural shell (layout and needs, such as gasoline, which will dictate use), or is this simply a new breed of city operating under the guise of a shopping center?
Basically what I’m getting at here is: Has the mall as a type earned the right to call itself a privately-owned and operated city, - in other words, can the word "city" be reduced to no more than “grouping complementary services in an ensemble? (Longstreth 152)”

Its fine…Ill just park in the courtyard

Centuries ago the Spanish courtyard was an extravagantly articulated space allowing sun to reach the interior of the dwelling while at the same time providing a green area privatized by the borders of the building itself. However, in the late 1920’s the courtyard saw a very different type of resident, the automobile. The Chapman Park Market in Las Angeles was designed to thrive off of the dynamic consumer who was no longer constrained by a walking distance, but by a car. According to Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers, most consumers will commute “…a maximum of 25 minutes to reach a regional shopping center” (Smith, 33). With the mass production of automobiles well underway all around the country, the issue of parking seemed to evolve right along with the development of shopping malls themselves. Specifically in the Chapman Park Market, “the arrangement retained the drive-in’s direct relationship between selling space and cars, while reestablishing the primacy of the street for its orientation and identity” (Longstreth, 140). Interestingly enough, parking and the distribution of goods was moved to the inner workings of the courtyard, allowing the shopping center to still have curb-side dominance accompanied by a pragmatic approach to dealing with the onset of the automobile.

Today, our shopping malls resemble that of Venturi’s “decorated shed” in that a symbol is applied to a conventional building system, differing from the malls seen at the beginning of the 20^th century which were built with a profound architectural presence. Longstreth notes, that “…the mass appeal of a large food outlet was balanced by the more elite draw of the specialty shop purveying fine goods.” (Longstreth, 140). As if the sight of a ‘big box’ store was too much to bare, richer architectural elements were added all around to offset the presence of a building distinctly designed for function. Longstreth also brings to fruition the idea of “self-service”, and its origins starting in the drug store. It’s interesting that back in the 20’s the idea of self service meant that you entered a store and independently picked out merchandise. Today we have become so immersed in this shopping typology that some stores feature a self-check-out, where you can autonomously scan and pay for all of your items without speaking a word to an employee. This is just one element of the modern day shopping mall which is clearly a derivative from early “self-service” methods, yet has been merged with technology to create not only a new way of life, but a new way to shop.

“pirating” store pleasures

In Gruen, Victor and Larry Smith. “Prologue, Part 1” Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers.“the automobile was the means by which the last vestige of community coherence was destroyed.”

I question the authors suggestion that automobiles provided complete freedom of movement to the individual driver and that the ensuing population sprawl followed “no pattern whatever.”

The authors describe a linear, binary demise of growth and congestion. For instance he states, “Business grew and so did automobile traffic.,” or “planning is needed to bring order, stability, and meaning to chaotic suburbia. The author is extremely pro-shopping and its physicality as “cystallization points for suburbia’s community life.”

Part I was a much more critical perspective on mercantile development. I appreciated the systematic outline of required components; developers, location, site, zoning, tenants, financing for effective shopping center development. As they describe it, the “healthy development of our communities.”

The terminology and descriptions of trade area analyses is very insightful when investigating the trends in mall development in the Phillipines. The awareness of “pirating stores” was amusing; especially their ability to overburden orderly traffic flow and parking facilities.

In Richard W. Longstreth’s, “Is Main Street Doomed?, I am fascinated by the diagrammatic plans for shopping center layout by Albert Frey. They illustrate, almost unknowingly, the utopic obsession with efficiency and consumption.

<-- No Parking This Side -->

As we have previously seen the study of the mall in relation to the French Arcades, it is very interesting to see their American counterpart developing in the early 1920’s. With the recent development of the mass production automobile, the standards of retail and sales began to simultaneously shift. The automobile became a key feature in the design and planning of these facilities and it is interesting to see the development of these schematic designs progress through the 1900’s. The retail industry begun to experiment with this idea that catered to the motorist in both terms of appeal and functions of circulation. In the 1920’s, shopping centers oriented themselves in a very dominate, frontal condition to the street and considered street parking sufficient for the amount of visitors per day. However, architects and planners in the market of shopping center quickly noticed that off street parking would be essential if the facilities they were designing were to be successful. The Latchstring drive-in market, built in 1927, served as a precedent for configuration of shops in a linear pattern, therefore allowing motorist to view the array of options from the street. Adversely, the Latchstring market served as a precedent of what not to do when it came to the configurations of vehicular traffic, pedestrian circulation, and adequate on-site parking. As this problem became more apparent to real estate developers of the time, the development of facilities such as the Park and Shop were implemented predominantly in the area surrounding Washington D.C. in the early 1930’s. These facilities very much learned from their drive-in counterparts in the west, but focused on providing adequate on site parking and direct access to their much larger stores. Yet another positive aspect of the newly developed “park and shop” typology was its ability to create an uninterrupted correlation with its surrounding neighborhoods. The improved area of off street parking did not create a large hindrance, which the street side parking of previous years did, to the surrounding neighborhoods. “Here stores and automobiles could be concentrated in an efficient way that was at once physically integrated with, yet not intrusive upon, the places they served” (Longstreth).

Commodity To Novelty

It is almost unbelievable how much study and science goes into designing the site and layout of a shopping center or “strip mall”. These nominally valued structures that are taken for granted play large roles in suburban daily routines. Though it is assumed that site would be chosen based on the suburban population of the area, it is incredible how such architecture has a typical plan and layout based on a specific mercantile breakdown; a large retail anchor, a supporting lesser anchor, and finally the smaller scale retailers. Although one could compare this to a mall, where laid out, has anchors at the ends, a food court at the centre or a middle side, and smaller retailers meshed in the middle, so one could say a shopping center is a “strip of a mall” taken and placed in a suburban setting.

It’s disheartening in a sense to have lost the “main street” atmosphere to commodity, but then does that also mean that the “main street” intern became a glorified novelty? For example, Disney’s Main Street USA is the first area you experience in the parks and as well with most other theme parks upon entry you are put in a small town “main street” type of experience filled with an abundance of retailers. What does this say about the future of shopping centers? Will they become the next “Main Street USA” and average mall take their place?

OooOOoo....colors

This week’s readings revolved around the façade, the public image, signs, advertisements and the impact on today’s economic society. William Leach emphasized the impact of advertisements in the public’s eye had a great effect and influence the consumers. It is important that the appeal of these advertisements is what will make or break a company due to the consumer. Back in the 19^th Century corporations took technology to a whole new level such as color photography, and decided to use it to sell their products. Color, is what gave way to advertisements and it began to be used by more and more stores. All these illustrations have caught the attention of the consumer and that was the strategy; catching the eye of the consumer. Today however, it is very cliché. We usually don’t recognize advertisements unless it has caught our attention because everything seems to be overused.

I remember seeing a Japanese energy drink commercial in Japan with Arnold Schwarzenegger a while ago and saying to myself, “wow, this is ridiculous.” I guess in today’s society where ads are thrown around, you would need something as ridiculous, shocking, and funny in order for it to catch your eye. My goodness, we have come a long way.

On a side note, i found the link on Youtube and it's the one I saw in Japan....oh the irony....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skBlEbsM0jM

NeW AgE AdvertisinG

In the late 1800’s putting more than words on a page was a new idea, color and images were never seen to be such an effective tool Everyone was used to the old way of going about advertising: boring black and white ads will all text, or perhaps some very small sketch in pencil. When companies started using color and pictures in their campaigns they say a shift in how the consumer reacted to the ads. The new goal of many large companies’ campaigns was to obtain economic salvation through “a closer relationship between the producer and consumer” as said by Hubbard. The companies wanted to display a sense of style and creativity to gain the customers attention and eventually their business. This “new-age” way to go about advertising created a great shift in American consumerism as we know it. This early use of color and image eventually lead to the billboard, now a staple in the American landscape no matter where you go. Producers put up these huge billboards to grab people attention through more than text, they used imagery; a media which sticks in your memory much more than bold text. Eventually department stores began to display their color and images in more than the 2D, they expanded to the 3D in the form of storefront windows. This shift from paper ads to physical advertising was probably one of the biggest changes to come about in advertising. The idea of displaying what you sell had never been implemented; many stores simply had newspaper ads and let people search for what they wanted. Now with the storefront display you could show people what they wanted, whether they intended to buy it or not. Storefront advertising caused such a shift in American advertising that it has never ceased to this day. Whether you are walking down the street, driving through town or stopped at a corner store, lively colorful advertising is everywhere to be seen.

The Mall as a Theater

I know we have discussed this issue before, but it seems that the question begins to arise of why must buildings only work to bring in money and not thought of as being the reason people came there. Why can’t architecture be the experience? It seems that experience of architecture is lost and doesn’t really come back to the “mall” or “shopping” experience for quite some time. In fact, it still hasn’t fully re-entered the business of mall design in a widespread sense. As I said though, architecture was only there for profit, not for the experience. Malls and the shopping experience were purely about “the spread of an aesthetic to serve business needs.” (Leach 40) There was a large increase in the sheer volume of businesses showing off and focusing on material concerns and using those concerns as there façade that they wanted to present.

The second issue at hand is that Elbert Hubbard seemed to be one of the first people in this rise of the shopping experience to push us into a realm that truly unified public and private. Glass as a material has the ability to do that of course, in it’s ability to physically enclose a space making in “private” while as being transparent, making it public, and that was a heavily employed material. However, the use of glass is not the only point, it is more the use of the idea that glass represents. Hubbard really wanted the advertising world to be open; there were to be no hidden unknown risqué things. He was essentially encouraging the rise of stores like Victoria secret and the way in which the publicity industry thrives on too much information and the breakdown of public and private, which is virtually non-existent in our society. Hubbard “argued time and again that people should push themselves and their ‘services and commodities’ forward into the public space, push and push, and that the best way to do that was through pictures.” (Leach 42)

On that note they also commented that successful ads are intrusive and invasive. That true publicity and advertisement was in the audiences face breaking down the barriers that separate public and private. With all this talk about public and private unification I find it very interesting that there were so many references to the theater. With the theater, the entire point is to separate public and private. There are facades and forced perspectives, and those seem to me to be more accurate of what I know of advertisement and publicity. Theater and merchandising were both all about a certain kind of display and ordered system of display through which to advertise. The key, as often stated in William Leach’s texts was purely getting people to buy as long as the goods were properly displayed. The quality of goods is rarely mentioned. The quality of the display however, was often the topic of conversation. This is often the case, even in theater. You speak first and foremost of the performance, and then maybe how nice the set looked, but ultimately, the countless other individuals and pieces that went into that show are practically unnoticed by the lay-person. Some “trimmers” like Fraiser, embrace this theatricality and as stated on page 68, “Fraiser was utterly theatrical in his methods.”

Currently I feel as if we are part of the latter. We are immersed in a shopping culture all about display. And no matter how much any modern store wants to attempt to reach out to me and break the public/private divide, it seems that they will be viewed as simply putting on a show, or merely acting on this stage, trying to win me over and all the while I am unaware of the workings backstage.

momentum of expectations

It is impossible to eliminate hunger because satisfaction of a need necessarily creates more need. So if you were to feed every person on the planet, that would just be proof that the planet can sustain more people. It is a basic function of human existence to never be completely satisfied. Call it a drive to improve. Furthermore, once a person has something, not having that something is unacceptable. If you are used to surfing the internet on a computer hooked up to a T1 line, you will never be able to tolerate a 56k modem, even if that very same 56k modem was cause for much celebration, delight, and envy when you first HAD to have one.

The service industry has built a paper castle for itself. By setting up the expectation in the customer's mind for the most gracious of treatment and the most humble of service, it is disallowing itself from maintaining human dignity and still staying competetive. If they truly wanted to make employees feel like family, they would give them a purpose to life, not one week's paid vacation at the company beach house on the Jersey shore. They are constructing a defensive superstructure in the name of profits that will fall down with the slightest gust of wind. Those who are building this castle, despite their attempts to dress up the shop windows and put on a good face, are at the mercy of the customer's every whim. Every peron with a "charge coin" is suddenly Louis XIV and must be obeyed, lest that one more piece of merchandise go unmoved.

Words, the Anti-Picture

William Leach explores at great length the power of the image as a form of highly positive and responsive advertising, even on a subliminal level. He quotes a billposter advertiser, “it is hard to get mental activity with cold type. You feel a picture.” (43) What struck me in his discussion is his lack of acknowledgment for the opposite end of the spectrum; the power of words for that which you don’t want to advertise.

Confused? You should be. Read on.

I suppose it wasn’t as important back in the early 1900’s when advertising was really starting to pick up, but today there are countless regulations that tell companies that they need to inform the customer of the risk associated with their products. I think of A Christmas Story (1983), which has begun to replace It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) as the most-watched Christmas classic of all time. A highly consumerist tale, this heart-warming story of a child wanting nothing for Christmas but a Red Rider Action Range something something air rifle with a scope and a compass on the stock shows 1940’s advertising at its most powerful level. The movie opens with Ralphie staring into a well-designed Higbee's store window with his friends and ogling the well-lit mass of glittering products and images, all calling out to them ‘ask for me for Christmas!’ Despite all the fun that’s shown to Ralphie in owning and shooting a bee bee gun, it seems purely up to the responsible adults to block the child’s wish with “you’ll shoot your eye out”, as the advertisements do nothing of the sort.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=3541

But would it matter if they did? Look at modern advertising. Leach quotes John Wanamaker in stating that “pictures are lesson books for the uneducated” (44) and it reminds me of one of the plots in the satire Thank You For Smoking (2005), where a Vermont senator tries to get a bill passed to put a skull and cross bones poison label put on cigarettes. A Mexican man supports the charge that such pictures are necessary, explaining that Surgeon General Warnings, because they are text, mean that cigarette companies want immigrants who cannot read English ‘to die’.

It’s funny, but brings up an interesting point. Why is it that whenever a product or company has to describe the problems with something, they always use words instead of images? Why are all the disgusting artificial ingredients in a microwave dinner listed in small font on the back while the cover has a glorious image of a Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner? Why do commercials for prescription drugs show a smiling man having a wonderful time while a small-voiced, fast-talking woman lists off in rapid fire that side effects may include ‘migraines, constipation, nausea, blood clots, artificial insemination, conjunctivitis, mood swings etc.

Now try to imagine that same commercial where the happy man, instead, is shown experiencing those aforementioned side effects, and the fast-talker lists off the ways it could benefit you. That would never happen. Why? The answer is obvious; by law, these ‘problems’ have to be there, but the prominence of them does not. So of course, if you’re trying to sell your product, it only makes sense to use pictures for the positive and memorable material, and words for what you’d like to be forgotten.

How Much Is Too Much?

After reading the William Leach text it is easy to see the emergence of the window display as something that has had a major influence on consumers. At the start of the nineteen century businesses began to realize how important advertising can be. In the reading we see that Elbert Hubbard was one of the first to realize how important eye appeal is to products, which at that time was something new. With the use of colored photographic cards that show the products, and how they may change your life where huge at that time. But now this is a common practice that is used in the industry. Brand association is something that is also commonly used which makes it hard to understand how we ever lived with out it. Now with advertising the involuntary and unavoidable presence of commercial ads these days creep into our inner consciousness willingly and even unwillingly. The old cold type of advertising which is based mainly on written text was dropped, for the hot type which is based on drawing you in through emotions. This is the new type of advertising that we see the most used now a days. Big business has over stepped its bounds, they associate themselves with sports teams, cartoon characters, movies, TV shows and color schemes to command our involuntary attention. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I guess we know why now

The Next Step

Facades are the next step towards the modern mall after the implementations of arcades. A “Facade” is essential to a merchant’s wellbeing in the retail industry. In the idea of window shopping at the turn of the century, the store window was the billboard, the advertising ad in the magazine, the television commercial; the best display will draw in the most consumers and produce the most revenue.

In relation to Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, the descriptive emphasis over and over in the story line was the display; and that was precisely what the Au Bonheur des Dames was known for. The magnitude of Au Bonheur des Dames I think would be comparable to the Macy*s store windows in New York City. It would be that people would come to the Macy*s flagship in New York during the holiday season not to shop, but just to look at the intense displays; the power of a window.

Soon neon signs began to take over later on in the display window. Today this is definitely relevant as you walk through the modern mall. No longer is the facade reliable only on content but the flashing light additives. Is it that the interior of a mall is coming to look like Las Vegas in the future where there are so many lights no one knows where to turn next? There are certain malls I have experienced that have started this condition which leads me to think how much would push the envelope for too much?

exchanging chores for play

Leach maps the history of advertising from ‘cold text’ of the 1890s dry goods catalogues to ‘halftone color images’ seen in Modern Housekeeping and Food News, which signifies the paradigm shift in merchant consumer relationship. Good Christian values initially dictated the protocol for merchants and as desire for capital increased the merchants’ drive to augment there profit margin this protocol changed. Now retailers were more concerned with seducing the consumer versus serving the consumer in an effort to expand their profit margin. What is interesting are the visual techniques used by the retailers to seduce the consumer such as the early colored cards dispensed at front doors or by mail. —“most important each attempted to associate its business with games, luxury, pleasure, fantasy, or faraway mystery.” (p44) Retailers are clever; they marketed a lifestyle of consumption versus showcasing the actual goods for sale. This technique plays out in the aggressive billboard industry, magazines, etc. that followed the cards. Prior to aggressive advertising exchange of goods was a necessary chore, versus now exchange of goods is programmed as a specific space and time for play.

visual propaganda

In William Leach’s Facades of Color, Class, and Light the display window is again immortalized as an essential tool in the department store business. The idea of advertising is a crucial component to the lively hood of the department store and it is through the visual display that sellers can best ‘sell’ themselves. The article focuses on a history of big name advertisers and their most effective forms of visual propaganda. Beginning in the nineteenth century the need to advertise has been apart of the consumerist agenda. From the photograph to electronic billboards and now through the visual display, advertisers see to knock out the competition through innovative techniques in visual therapy. This marketing tool has begun to change the image of the department store. Theses buildings facades are now designed as billboards from the street. With the glass façade we see a trend not only adopted by the department store but has also began to manifest itself at more grandeur level. Glass is now a popular medium in all types of design from education to residential and even high-rise construction. A trend that began in the retail realm has transcended commercial design and is now the status quo of mainstream cotemporary design. But like the department store, glass is used for its ability to advertise from the street, for the everyday person to gaze at what its interior has to offer. In a way, glass has become a propagandist tool and as we have seen, is a tool that has creatively manipulated its form and function to appease a very visual public. The rue of all this is that these glass facades have become a less inviting form of design that disengage and hinder interaction with the public. I feel that the glass façade is a human interface that does keep its public at a distance but allows one to gaze at its interiors in a passive manner. The glass façade invites the passing public inside while keeping itself from being completely exposed.

Subliminal Messages

In the works of William Leach it becomes apparent that the department store is a product of advertisement, thriving from both subliminal and conscious propaganda which has seemingly become more important than the quality of products sold, making advertisement “an indispensable organ” (60) to the department store. Leach mentions the boom of billboards across the nation and constantly stresses the importance of bridging the gap between producer and consumer, putting truth to the observation that “without advertising, the modern merchant sinks into oblivion” (59). With advertisement so prominent across the nation, it becomes blatantly obvious that we are in one way or another always subjected to some form of propaganda, whether we open our eyes to it or not. One interesting argument brought to fruition by the article is the notion of subliminal advertising and how it literally has the potential to reach the consciousness of everyone. Still a hot topic today, subliminal messages are often referred to as propaganda, but really do not differ too much from show-windows and other forms of advertisement alike, considering both are articulately “designed to pass below the normal limits of perception”¹. From an architectural perspective, it is interesting how Leach describes the show-windows as both an architectural expression and a vital advertisement ploy. Leach unveils the level at which architecture can operate, and makes apparent that architecture mixed with advertisement has the potential to create elements such as the show-window and change the perception of the department store forever. Leach reveals the importance of the show-window and discloses that it “…will sell them like hot cakes, even though [the goods] are old enough to have gray whiskers” (60). With the provocative element of advertisement so very present, perhaps the quality of products can be eclipsed by both the way in which these goods are represented, and the ‘pleasing’ environment in which they are sold.

¹ "Subliminal Message." Wikipedia. 1 Feb. 2008 .

Sam Walton, Rhetorician

Rhetorical tweaking allows companies like Wal-Mart to function in varied, international socio-political contexts. The company makes it apparent that the profoundly and conveniently universal nature of the service industry’s core values, as revealed in Leach’s text, move freely between markets, cultures and borders of all kinds. We can judge by the success of multinational retailers that the same kind of individualism articulated in Wanamaker’s management policies work at an international scale. The fundamentals of individualism play on different value systems in China to achieve the same effect. An article appearing in The China Journal describes the corporation’s construction of the ideal modern workplace for the individual; “Wal Mao” discusses the official rhetoric of individualism applied to both customer and salesmen. A shift in this rhetoric is required to elicit the individualizing effect from English to Chinese. Wal-Mart’s ten rules (written by Sam Walton), individualizing in their English versions (“Celebrate your success, Listen to everyone in your company, Swim upstream, Motivate your partners…”), are re-condensed in the target language and strategically used to ensure commercial success by ideological consistency. “In Chinese, however, the mundane tone of ‘ten rules’ is replaced by ‘ten laws’ (shige faze) or ‘ten great laws for success of the cause’ (shiye chenggong de shi da faze). Similarly, the tone and associations of the translated laws shift form what might be glossed in English as a ‘language of marketing’ to a Chinese vocabulary tinged with distinctly ‘revolutionary’ connotations” (Davies 10).

Sam Walton and Chairman Mao Hand-Wave (cropped). The China Journal. By Andrew Kipnis and Luigi Tomba. Contemporary China Centre. Canberra: Australian National University, 2007

The Advertising of Yesterday, Today

After reading William Leach’s essay, Facades of Color, Glass, and Light, and then viewing a commercial on television, one cannot but notice how little some forms of advertising have changed since their birth in the late nineteenth century. The birth of advertising in color brought about the first advertisements that rather than try to illustrate the product, tried to provoke emotion within the consumer. The “advertising cards” illustrated images that jumped out at the observer, and brought about a certain idea of the product being sold, rather than showing the product. In many ways this is identical to how companies will try to advertise their product in today’s world.

Many commercials on television and advertisements in magazines and newspapers simply try to evoke an emotional response out of the consumer that will influence them into buying the product. Many times it is almost impossible to figure out what product is even being sold in the commercials because they either do not mention the name of the product until the last few seconds, or the object is never even pictured. These advertisements simply try and make a type of commercial that make the consumer feel happy, laugh or interested in the mystery, so that the idea of the product will stay with them. This form of advertising is exactly what the advertising cards of the 1880s and 1890s tried to accomplish. Instead of depicting the actual product for sale, the cards tried to associate the particular business with ideas of fantasy, mystery or pleasure.

10x10 store front to 200 acre roof canopy......GLASS

As we recall the study of the Arcade and its evolution to the modern shopping mall, we can also draw a similar parallel to the evolution of glass and iron as a material of construction, particularly in the culture of human consumerism. The Arcade was greatly influenced by the discovery of iron construction and the ability to create large plates of glass thus pushed the world into a new realm of space and a new type of shopping experience. As the arcade became more popular and began to grow larger and larger as a child of the city it began to evolve into its own entity, the strip mall. Similarly, the strip mall has developed through the mid 1900 and finally became the modern mall as we know it today, a “private” indoor facility of public space and endless storefront displays. I find it interesting that our culture of consumerism has driven the idea of the shopping facility from a basic covered city street, to the creation of malls such as Destiny which can be considered cities in themselves.

We can step back further and begin to analyze not only the evolution of the mall as a structure, but as I have mentioned, the materials that simultaneously aided in its creation. Glass has almost always been present in the construction of this new idea of mass consumerism. It has ultimately led to the creation of things as elementary as Wanamaker’s storefront window to the monumental construction of a 200 acre roof canopy at Destiny USA. What is also interesting about the role of glass in the human culture of consumerism is the role it has played in the creation of marketing and sales. The store window was the first display of marketing and signage in the late 1800’s. It implemented new tactics of “eye appeal” in the sales of good and offered a more creative palette then the average hand painted sign of the day. We can see this illustrated in Zola’s book when the character Mouret teaches his associated how to decorate the windows. He uses unconventional techniques of displaying silks and begins to toss the materials in a multicolored mountain of good that had never been seen before. These tactics create emotions within people that words can not do. As portrayed in Facades of Color, Glass, and Light, Leach quotes one billposter advertiser as saying “You may forget what you read – if you read at all. But what you see, you know instantly! It is hard to get mental activity with cold type, YOU FEEL A PICTURE.” By creating a picture and displaying the goods as materials that can directly improve the consumer’s quality of life, the department store gave birth to modern advertisement such as the ad picture, artistic poster, electrical signs, billboards, and catalogs. With the new advents of color and display, both physical and by printed images, a “priceless ingredient” in consumerism was discovered. “It creates desire for the good displayed. It imprints on the buying memory

Phan  tas  ma  go  ri  a

Class readings this week revolved around advertising as both a technological effect and a cultural/social affect. The development of advertising cards, boards, electronic signs, and store windows paralleled technological advancements. New varieties in light, glass and photo/print production techniques allowed images to be produced and reproduce through new mediums. Glass displays “helped to demarcate more clearly the affluent from the poorer buying public”, as William Leach states. If you couldn’t afford to pay for a particular lifestyle; you watched “its” agent and products through the box storefronts, either through jealously or entertainment. This action is comparative to watching particular programs on television that creep into our inner consciousness and define our “being” through “having”.

Arguably the compulsory, visually heavy tactics of early advertisement schemes no longer operate as intended. We are a learned collective that enjoys the refined and modern products and their culturally associated lifestyles. Today’s novelty and iconic isn’t the “flashy” or phantasmagorical, it’s the polished and streamlined. .

Window on the World

The use of transparency to create a mediating zone between the perceived private enterprise of the department store and the public domain of the surrounding city is symptomatic of the reconstitution of a product’s place as a fixture in society. But the prior tactic of inverting the market to form the department store conceals the “world inside,” and seems to make sense on some level – the function of pictorial advertising alone (catalogs, etc.) may be to heighten desire for a product as an agent promising a new and better way of life, independent of that product’s placement in a window display and association with the manufactured world of that display. However, as items are brought down from the shelves, dusted off, and placed in situ, they are necessarily removed from their context as frivolous luxuries and begin to assume a role in a larger, more personal picture.
The emergence of this pattern of buying for the purpose of altering life and behavior is a triumph of a fetishism of commodities, where social relationships are confused with their medium, the commodity. With the advent of the window display, the department store recognized and reached out for its lifeblood – the public domain, and more specifically, street life. And after proffering an opportunity for a better life through a sense of beauty or convenience (once something a human relationship could offer), the display window denies the most basic instinct to directly experience that life – to advance, to touch, to feel. The connection is only visual. Upon entering the store, liberated from the solely visual experience, the senses are overwhelmed with opportunity and the drive to buy. The problem of the department store as introvert (the purchase of commodities is seen as the fulfillment of a decadent desire) is solved indirectly by means of promising a new kind of relationship with merchandise, one which echoes human bonds in its potential to alter and improve life - and it all starts with the display window.