Interventions on the chain-store super U. reconstructing the shopping experience.

interventions

on the chain-store

super U

reconstructingthe shopping experience

Andreas Gursky – Coney Island supermarket

where all you need is under the

one roof

Andreas Gursky – Coney Island supermarket

arcade beginnings

and entertainment

Roman Coliseum – arcade surrounding the mass – enclosed towards a central entertainment

Roman Pantheon – centralizing the architecture - arcade as governmental power

Arabic arcades 6th century

Arcade entrances – Spain 11th century century

Walter Benjamin’s

“the arcades project” (passagenwerk)

commodity consumption

and popular culture within the architecture of the arcade

Walter Benjamin – early 20th century German

philosopher and social critic

• Benjamin’s work focused on the “everyday” and the “discarded refuses” of modern industrialism and popular culture.

• Benjamin’s focus on the 19th century Parisian arcades built to accommodate the increases in commodity production where changes in popular culture could be experienced in the exchange of goods between buyer and seller within a controlled interior environment.

• These spaces became the forerunner of the modern- day supermarket and arcade that now consume many spaces around the world.

Parisian arcade 18th century – the production of the inserted shopping strip

Parisian passage – uncovered walkways

Leading to covering – 19th century - the glass roof – inside/outside relationships are retained

Parisian Arcades – 19th century - insertion of shops and commodities in sealed climatically controlled environments.

In continuance

Arcade as Galerie – architecture as ornamental theme – themes and the interior sealed arcade

In continuance

Queen Anne arcade Manchester

Freemont Street – Las Vegas – digitally controlled arcade environment

the shopping mall acts as an oasis where the world of holidays

is in incessant rebirth and regeneration

the supermarket landscape

(historical modernism)

Shopping in the 50'

Shopping in the 50’s – the American dream.

Signage and attraction in architecture starts to take hold

Modernism makes it mark in supermarket design

Supermarket as urban lifestyle

Death to modernism – dead chains.

The seventies

The eighties

Kitsch – the good, bad and the ugly

Lifestyle no.2

Dead supermarkets no.2.

the mall is constantlychanging its appearance, anchoring itself to an

evolving present in a magical process

the modern arkaden Potsdamer Platz

Glass façade – absolute transparency – invitation to enter

Glass roof and themed relationships on the dialectic between inside/outside

Circulation and orientation – levels – and private security.

The internal shop front window –displaying the commodities

Entertainment – read the paper – hang out – walk around.

Something for the kids – information booth – dummies – American style

the modern supermarket place

Langeauc – rural France

now for

doing the circuit

Get the park – get the trolley

Getting in - SALE

Getting around

and around

Packaging the colour show

Filling the trolley – and checking out

architecture on the cheap

Finding the car – finding the exit

Kaufhaus sports theme – on the right track – start consuming

composition

circulation

theme

working is the mundane side of life, but being a consumer is potentially its most poetic or symbolic pay-off

site projects for

the supermarket chain best

typical best store

Site’s changes – the architecture of pop and trash into the spaces of consumption – theme park design.

Breaking into the spaces of consumption

Architecture of the fake

Fake presentations

Façade as crumbling

Close-up - crumbling facade

Party time – façade as party trick

Opening the entrance

Breaking away – going in - architecture as filmic experience.

The peeling facade

Glass façade

Forest facade

Light façade – the show – Las Vegas

Lifting the facade

lifted

Triple facade

asphalt best store

ghost car park – best store

car park as theme

Mirror shelves - the real or the reflection

Swatch watch shop

MacDonald's lifted off its foundations.

Procession – the urban consumerism as theme park – set in concrete.

circulation between body and

constructed space or simply between the shelves

Between shelves and between architectural constructions of space

New York Stock Exchange – the navigation of finance in the movement of people who decide it.

Chicago stock exchange – getting crazier.

so it is not too difficult to project that all space is commoditizing

the body within the new architectural spaces of the arcade,

mall and supermarket

• so

this studio will be based on designing hyperspaces as

prototype for a supermarket/arcade chain-store that will spread its way across Europe

site of project - in and around Innsbruck

super U - projects in brief• 1a. research project – spaces of consumption – detail your own shopping

experience – can be supermarket, department store, kitchen store, tools store, car yard, electrical store, sports store, music store etc.

• Note: this detailing will be realized firstly as photographs/video and secondly as a plan of the store and its contents - layout of the plan will be in A1.

• 1b. research project – collect and research images of 10 spaces in where there is some relationship between architecture and consumption existing anywhere in the world.

• 2a. the storage stack - design a prototype for shelving to be used in your supermarket/arcade.

• 2b. space creation – design a space solely constructed out of this shelving prototype.

• 2c. check out – design a prototype of the bar coding of products and the exchange of money between customer and supermarket employee.

• 3a. circulation study – take a place of intersection in the city of Innsbruck and create a demographic modeling showing the tracings over a given hour of how people move within your designated environment i.e., either a public, commercial or institutional spaces.

• This project can be executed in video, collage stills photography, drawing and/or animated through computer software.

• Designing automatic and interactive relationships between objects and consumer will also be explored throughout the studio.

super U – projects cont.

major project

Designing a supermarket/arcade that will seek to from new relationships between consumer and seller, architectural design and constructed space and between bodies and commodities.

• The Interior

• The supermarket/arcade shall have an overall capacity of 40,000 square meters – what the supermarket/arcade contains i.e., all sectors of goods found in the everyday supermarket in the same space e.g. food items, plus various accessories found in most common supermarkets spread within the interior of the building.

• The Exterior

• The site is to be in Innsbruck with an overall land size of 30,000 square meters.

• Emphasis will be placed on buildings overall form and design, facade treatments, materials and construction techniques.

• Parking plan and programming.

Studio Influences• Many – it’s all around us – but look at the American 80’s

architectural firm – SITE.

• Look at Las Vegas architecture – look at Robert Venturi’s work and more than anything else – go and shop – sit in an arcade – be homeless – and do the circuit of the supermarket.

• Essentially the experience of the modern supermarket is a bland horizontal orientation. The work of the studio will be to investigate architectural design in many different forms and orientations – emphasis will be placed on inventing new forms in the designing and construction of space for the housing of commodities and of-course bodies who buy.