IDEA store

Cultural, Theoretical, and Innovative Approaches to Contemporary Interior Design, 2020

The change in the significance of goods is a process that, ever since the end of the Industrial Revolution, has triggered far-reaching changes in society as the term has lost any meaning in relation to its purely functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. “Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods” has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social,cultural, and economic.

Design innovations for contemporary interiors and civic art / Luciano Crespi, editor.

Interiors, intended as the discipline able to build (not only) physical connections in between spaces, people and objects, has deeply changed in the last decades, assuming new roles and aims. Both theory and practice, thanks to its continuous updating, have being able to generate innovative and collaborative insight and solutions, moving fast towards new contents, new tools and different strategies focused on the contemporaneity. In this framework, retail design, both in research and profession, is particularly interesting as an expression of this disciplinary shift, with an approach characterized by multidiscipli-narity, experimentation and a strong relational dimension. The change in the significance of goods is a process that, ever since the end of the Industrial Revolution, has triggered far-reaching changes in society as the term has lost any meaning in relation to its purely functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. " Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods " has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social, cultural and economic.

2012

An event like Black Friday makes hundreds of people in the United States stand in line in shopping malls all over the country. Typically these shopping malls are large buildings with over a hundred stores of all different brands. Inside the building everything is so well organized that there is the ultimate shopping climate. The mall is well air-conditioned, the lights are carefully regulated, there are bright colored and flashing advertisements everywhere and there is even a possibility to snack. Once a customer parks on the large parking lot, just outside one of the many entrances, they have no reason to leave, since everything they want is inside the shopping mall. There are thousands of products to choose from and one seems to be completely different from another. It is almost like an ultimate consumption paradise, because everything is carefully presented and available for consumption. The shopping mall has become almost become symbolic for the modern mode of consumption. It does not offer products that humans need to provide for subsistence, but rather all commodities without actual primary practical use. All the products presented as a whole give the shopping mall its atmosphere and they contribute to the presentation of each other product. The concept of the shopping mall offers “the consumer fantastic, mythical images (signs) and they are objective structures that constrain the behaviour of consumers.” The shopping mall has become the ultimate example of modern capitalist consumerism, because it has embraced all its concepts of the ‘code’ by enhancing the sign value of commodities. In the modern capitalist society all basic human needs are satisfied and therefore resistance is not likely to happen, but also not explicitly necessary for the happiness of human society. Shopping malls have become the modern workplace, because consumerism practiced inside a mall is essential to the continuation of the system. The shopping mall concept works two ways; it is an essential practice in modern material production and the concept also influences the consumer ideology of ‘needs’.

Retail Design Theoretical Perspectives, published by Routledge, 2017

Chapter 5 Retail Environments The changing relationship between producers and consumers, the growth of service industries, and the opportunities for shopping as a leisure activity have significantly influenced where retailing takes place through the use of internal and external spaces. The opportunities for consumption beyond the selling of products, have embraced the development of the 'third place' and the design of explicitly experiential retail environments. The focus on consumer experience but also the convergence of commerce, service, leisure and culture has contributed to both the hybridity and fluidity of the designed environment. Fluidity extends to the physical retail space itself, as it becomes permeated by online connectivity to the virtual environment. The spatial theme is one of increasing complexity as the boundaries between transaction and leisure have become blurred; stores have a commercial, sales function but also showcase the brand, communicating its values and providing a sensory leisure experience. With its extension into cultural institutions, retailing has had to negotiate its commercial function with predominant educational and recreational functions. More generally retail outlets have contested or enhanced public space. Their appearance at airports and railway stations, sports venues and tourist attraction provide further insights into the diversity of retail formats, sizes and purposes, and the temporality of space. This chapter commences with a more detailed exploration of the theoretical contexts of place and space, and their influence on the diversity of retail formats and their design. It continues by explaining how stores can be distinguished by their 'atmosphere', and experiential properties. The development of the 'third place' concepts leads to further consideration of the possibilities for more complex sensory environments in two contrasting formats, flagship, especially luxury, stores and pop-up stores. The final section of the chapter extends these environments into the online sphere, and the ways in which digital technologies challenge notions of retail space. It concludes with the problem of stores as showrooms or showcases for online shopping. In so doing, the chapter reflects the dimensions of the retail environment from more bounded, visual places, focused on products and display, to the fluid, consumer engaging spaces of experiential and sensory stores. Perspectives on retail environments: place and space Retailing is a global activity, but one not necessarily requiring a global solution. Buildings and the streets and malls that contain them, provide the contexts for the empty retail 'shell' (Plunkett and Reid 2012). Towns and cities offer both idiosyncrasies and less anonymous spaces, but bring with them the homogeneity of multiple store brands. The environments of retailing, and their design, are determined by their relationship to concepts of place and space. These define the possibilities for design, through their location, the built environment, the size of store and its internal conceptualisation.

Kastamonu University Journal of Engineering and Sciences, 2021

Consumption was a phenomenon that occurred to meet basic needs in ancient times. It is no longer basic essential for individuals with changing times and technology. Urban consumption places also included commercial products accessible within walking distance in the city in the past. Today, it has turned into shopping malls that have multiple functions individually and gain an image of the city as well as consumption. Within the scope of the study, the historical development process of the shopping centers, which are common in today's cities, has been examined. Markets, agoras, forums, passages, bazaars, multi-storey stores, and today's shopping centers and the missions of these places in the city are dealt with temporally. In the research, the change of the concept of consumption in the historical process has been evaluated. The study will contribute significantly to the literature with the introduction of the temporal change process. It is thought to be a reference for future studies.

2018

According to Aristotle, for a human being to live their best life, that is a life that flourishes, is to live a political life. A political life is lived best in a polis, or a self-sufficient community, so therefore, the most flourishing human life is one lived in a polis. Also, for a polis to be self-sufficient, its citizens must be flourishing, so there exists a special sort of constitutive relationship between the polis and its citizens. There are certain capacities available to human beings in the polis that promote their flourishing (namely loyalty and trust) that help fulfill important human needs. These capacities are best carried out through various subcommunities in the polis. Subcommunities range in size and interest, but the ones that best fulfill important human needs also contribute most to the polis, and thus contribute most to human flourishing. In this paper, I will argue that physical retail space is a particular kind of subcommunity that can fulfill an important hu...

Environment and Planning D-society & Space, 2002

A+ArchDesign , 2018

Public spaces like shopping areas are indispensable places for human. The buying and selling of goods played a very important role in the development of towns and cities (1). Shopping places has been changed with modern movement. At the same time, these spaces embrace particular events that have collective social, historical and cultural associations; projections of these events influence the physical transformations, which can each be re-identified through time. One of the basic features of traditional shopping areas is the association between urban fabric and social structure (2). However, contemporary shopping places has been emerged as closed box independent from tissue of city which lost their spatial values. Therefore, especially in historical cities, the unity of 'urban fabric-shopping place' is impaired. The "space-time" relation in modernity shifts because of breaking ties of societies with the traditions and is leading to the loss of identity (3). This study discusses the space design of contemporary shopping areas as important public city places and the interpretation of traditional impression in today's modern architecture to refer to values of place. With this aim, "Mediacite" shopping center in Belgium designed by Ron Arad and eastern covered bazaar will be examined as case study. The "Mediacite" was created in the context of modern design criteria, although the architect has revived the sense of traditional design principles in the place. This project ties together all the disparate elements of its site to create a new axis through the city of Liege (4).

Progress in Human Geography, 2003