| Title |
Architecture and Spectator : Shop Architecture in the Culture of Consumption |
| Abstract |
Designing shop involves the dilemma of embracing the practical necessity of retailing and the concomitant demands for autonomous architectural exploration. The paper investigates a possibility of resolving this problem by looking at the way in which shop formulates the visual and spatial relationships between shoppers, commodity objects and sellers. Two contrasting approaches are portrayed. The first presupposes that there is a direct association between architectural form in isolationand its referent. This object-based approch reduces symbolism to iconography. The second is guided by the more abstract aim of restructuring the modes of moving, seeing, and being seen. This approch attempts to retrieve the symbolic from the material things and return them to the social dimensions of shopping activity. In this way, there is still a significiant critical design activity in the culture of consumption. |