Gremlins

While the town of Chickasaw may seemingly be public, it is in fact private, despite “its design signifying a traditional public space” (Lonsway). It seems as though the town of Chickasaw struggles to keep itself independent, due to the many spatial connections which service a town, whether it attempts to remain off the grid or not. Although these spatial conflicts seem outrageous, as architects a provocative issue comes to fruition when considering public vs. private, and how to design and develop a project which may interact with its public surroundings, but must remain private, thus autonomous. It is within these spatial connections that one may make a link to the architectural discipline and the idea of ‘brand gremlins’, which are “the people and processes responsible for seemingly small but repetitive mishaps…that progressively undermine a brand” (Farquhar). Along with the notion of the ‘brand gremlin’ comes the challenge of identifying a strategy to turn what is wrong with a particular product, use its assents, and develop it into something which benefits the brand. These so called ‘brand gremlins’ hold a significant relationship to architecture as a discipline, despite the fact that they seemingly hold no spatial concept.

In relation to ‘brand gremlins’, an architect/developer may go into a project with a specific idea about how their project could react with the landscape, thus developing a formal strategy based off of the existing site. After further land testing, the developer reveals that the ground contains some contaminates from future use, thus some land must be manipulated. It is then that the architect must use the assets of the land, despite that it has changed from the original concept, to still design and build a project which remains seamless to its surroundings, and “…turn gremlins into advocates for the brand” (Farquhar).

A Public Affair?

Politics and court precedents always set for me a certain wonder for what will arise as a result of them. I wonder how the founding fathers of America would feel about how the second amendment extends to assault rifles when their goals at the time were simply to make up for the lack of a standing army. In the private rights and free speech debate in such places as malls and Disney, there’s obviously a lot of ambiguity for how laws put in place before electricity was really harnessed end up being interpreted in today’s day and age. Beyond even ideas like Disney policemen giving false impressions or protesting fur in front of Macy’s, I start to consider what implications ‘private domain’ may begin to have with the future of the internet.

The internet is inherently extremely ‘public’. It gives off all of the implications of a something that is public for personal gain (be it marketing or showing off a toy soldier collection) and therefore by the Chickasaw precedent of so many years ago which stated “The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.” (326 U.S. 501, 1947: 505, quoted in Lonsway 354)

So when a website gives off all the ‘identity’ signals of something public and is distinguished only by the fact that it is privately owned, can they get mad (as in ‘suing’ mad) when someone posts something insulting to them on their website? What about when someone is in a public forum on privately record company’s website and starts promoting their own show or band? Today, that’s usually called ‘spamming’, and like the ‘flyers in the mall’, one’s immediate reaction might be ‘well no, because that website belongs to that record company’.

But imagine if you will, a world many years from now where nearly everything you ‘need’ can be found with nothing more than the internet. Then, like the mall, that age old argument can be made again that if people are doing everything they need to online and 98% of all musicians start using one website that just starts to hold a sweeping monopoly for them (kind of like Google in the search engine business), then can’t one say that their entire target audience exists on that website and therefore they should be able to advertise to fulfill their ‘free press’, ‘free speech’ rights? Of course this kind of speculative debate could go on for many thousands of words, and is potentially useless until it starts to show itself more as a problem, but there’s some food for thought. Where, in a future internet-dominated world, is it okay to shamelessly advertise for free?

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The ART of Social Condensing

Lifestyle centers such as the Easton Town Center are interesting artifacts, in regards to their programmatic layout and location. Programmatically, centers such as these lend themselves to the lifestyle found in areas of high population density and more urban environments. Combining housing and grocery with big name retail and restaurant dinning provides a very stable shopping demographic and the perfect solution to creating the opportunity for customers to revisit the location. What I find interesting is that locations such as these have been successful in the suburban context. The density of the surrounding area has not forced this type of lifestyle on the occupants, such as living complexes in Manhattan or Hong Kong have, but they have served as a social condenser at both the internal residential scale and the outward communal town scale. They have also been beneficial for the town due to the fact that they drastically increase the value of surround property and keep the taxes for the aid of their own community. Lakewood Town Center is a perfect example of the positive effects that can come from development projects such as these and should be used as models for smaller cites of a similar problem.
It is also interesting to consider the point at which retail development can become detrimental to a society. Projects like Lakewood and Easton have proven to work at a fairly large scale, but mega malls such as Destiny seem to take away from the sense of community. Although the tax income of the community may increase with sales, there is appoint where retail of such large scale can hurt the small business.

How much is "value" worth?

It’s seems that value no longer has the same definition. Dictionary.com defines value first as “relative worth, merit, or importance,” the primary example being the value of a college education. Then the second definition is “monetary or material worth, as in commerce or trade.” The point that I’m trying to make is that value is no longer defined in the first example. It is about the cheapest. When Zukin writes about the honest brokers she says that “they place themselves on our side in the endless struggle for value” (Zukin 170) They may be attempting to do so, but true value never actually comes into play. It seems that true value only comes into play when the individual has the time or the money to make the distinction. As I said, people claim to want to know the value of goods but they don’t actually want to know it. They want what is quick, easy, and cheap. Dr. Phil, the popular talk show host, satisfies his audience because he is the quick, easy, and free answer to real therapy. But he’s not an actual doctor. Yes, of course, he is real. But how does his false advertising of therapy benefit the public who views his show. Dr. Phil.

Reality is unimportant to Americans so long as what they get is cheap and easy. When I worked for Best Buy, 90% of the people who came in were looking for the cheapest of whatever they needed. Even when it was a leisure item they typically spent the big bucks on the fancy TV because it has Sony or Pioneer slapped on it. But then, even when you tell them they are only going to get the “store quality” or “full quality” of the product if they buy all the appropriate cables and services, they don’t listen. Does anyone sign up for that? Of course not. They have the name brand they want, and they got it quick and easy and, yes it looks better than that old 20-inch Curtis Mathis, but it is not being used efficiently to it highest potential. Yet, the individual spent a good amount of money on a it and if they had only spent a little bit more, they would have obtained a huge increase in quality.
Zukin claims that the Honest Brokers “represent our deepest longing for value” (Zukin 173) But again, value is too often tossed around.

The problem is that this concept of value only worked when it was new. But when using this honest broker technique, deception crops up because people want to advertise according to this standard of honest brokers but in reality they are simply lying. In the new play, “Mr. Nice Guy” by Alex Coulombe, you find a pre-film commercial at the beginning of the play, and on the bottom of the screen there are little asterisks* citing that these quotes are not actual quotes or all the little catches to what’s being advertised. This may just be a play but it touches on reality.

Because so many companies have used the honest approach while really scamming the public, the consumer no longer has time for being convinced about the value. Now, most people just figure they will get screwed either way so why not go with the cheaper thing, so they don’t regret it as much. They don’t want to be scammed. In current advertising, companies have gone so far that they are calling each other out on this “fine print.” Companies are reading the fine print that the consumer may miss and bringing it to your attention to make their own product seem like the best option while also making their competition seem worse. But again, even those advertiser are hiding truths about their products.

The community mall article by Cohen and Borko is just reinforcing what was just stated. Americans want what is cheap, easy and quick and the lifestyle village provides that. It creates a microcosm of survival. Because the rise of suburbia has forced us into a situation in which you have to drive to Target and then find K-Mart and then go to Blockbuster and then drive all the way back home, Americans are wasting too much time, too much money for gas, and it was not as quick and easy as doing the same thing within walking distance, which is what the lifestyle village provides. Society has gotten so large and so spread out that the only way to deal with this many people is to begin breaking it up into villages. Villages have always existed, but because societies have become so dense in the past 100 years, we now are realizing that happiness lies in us reverting back to the idea of the village, where everything is close, small, convenient. The only problem is that economically we still live in a global market. Also “the narrative control of an individual’s experience is arguably central to commercial success.” (Lonsway 255) So companies don’t want to lose their hold on their consumers. But if we could look inward and have these villages exist as local, self-sufficient entities it would be a step in the right direction.

I'm getting it because he told me to ...

In Sharon Zurkin's article she goes into depth about consumerism and how it has changed our lifestyle(s). Consumer guides are something that has came up that changes and influences the way we think about certain products. We rely on these people or so called "honest brokers" to tell us about products, items, and basically everything else you can think of. What they think and recommend to us is what we will most likely get next time we need a product. When they say that a Nissan 350Z is best coupe outside under $30K, we will definitely consider the Nissan 350Z because we trust the consumer guides advice. However, one question always comes up when it comes to consumer goods and that is, "How trustworthy are they?"
Recently in the gaming industry there was a scandal about consumer guides and electronic gaming companies. It seemed that gaming companies have paid off these "honest brokers" that write reviews about these games in order to enhance the games image. Game companies that produce games such as "Kane & Lynch:Dead Men" were rumored to have paid off the people who write reviews and coaxed them to write a good review about the game. Doing this would convince the consumer to buy that game next time they are at a Best Buy or a Game Stop. However, the reviews about that certain game didn't match what the consumer's thought about it as the majority of people who own the game basically said it "sucked."

Consumer Dependency

In this consumption based society, consumers try and take advantage of every resource available to them. In the grocery stores and shopping malls, consumers are faced with never ending advertisements and endorsements for products that they should be buying instead of others. “Today, we depend on the advice of honest brokers who teach us how to choose the best automobiles, microwave ovens, and take-out pizzas” (Zukin 172). Consumers are influenced more and more by these endorsements by magazines, noted newspapers and various books, that they have completely put aside their own opinions on products for those of complete strangers.

The writers for The New York Times, Car and Driver, PC World and Good Housekeeping have taken over for our parents in pointing us in the right direction on how we should live our lives. They will tell us which products are the cheapest, which are the most effective at doing their job and even which products are the healthiest for us. Even though these honest brokers are speaking to a general audience have no actual idea of what we really do need, they speak to us as if they will always know what’s best for each of us. By creating a dependency on the brokers, we as consumers struggle to purchase something even as insignificant as a book or a bag of pretzels without knowing which brand is above the rest.

The Price for Pretty

Where to start…. If you think for a second it is easy to connect the dots and see the linear evolution from the Paris Arcades to Lifestyle Villages. What isn’t easy is to see where this evolution is heading. In order to see into the future a few critical questions must be asked first. Brian Lonsway addresses them but does not, nor should he have to, answer them. Where does this entertainment invasion stop and/or how much will it sacrifice program. In these designed hospitals, for example, a couple of problems have already arisen: including “problems of separately managing two clienteles” (Lonsway 288), and spending moneys on sand castles versus mental equipment. In other words, “wellness over illness” (Lonsway 295).

As architects, yes it might not be a surprise but should be a concern. And yes designing specifically for the blind, deaf and disable is essential for creating better spaces and yes shaking up the “idea” of a typology is not wrong, but where does it stop. Where does function get sacrificed for form? I think it is important for us architects to recognize this critical line and realize the consequences for crossing it.

On another equally important point of which I mentioned last week in class, is if everything is unique, what is it then unique too? What would it be like if there were ten Guggenheim's on 5^th Avenue? Move a little south on 5^th Avenue and you could see the result when the Seagram Building’s set back idea is duplicated and placed next to each other.

If I had to sum up my argument if would be that while conventional thinking is not the law, it is important to understand why it is the convention. Making things to look cool and unique might work at first but without substance it has no way of making it last. Wow I sound like my professor…interesting.