Architecture & MARKET v.2 presentation: shopping is good

The final presentation of Architecture & Market took place successfully on January 9 at the AAS in Tilburg. The book "Shopping is good" collects all the research cases, projects, and essays from the course. Special thanks to Anton Wubben for his presentation at MVRDV and Floris Alkemade for his valuable critics and lecture Shopping and the City on December 12, at the Academy.
Students of the course: Laurynas Bakas, Raymond Duivesteijn, David Peeters, Dennis van de Rijdt, Jelle Segeren, Olivier Vet, and Maarten van Vroonhoven.
See former edition in NEWS 23/12/07.

more info: http://www.fontys-aas.nl


Cover of the book "Shopping is good'

Pages of the book (page 1-2: Olivier Vet, page 3: Jelle Segeren, page 4-5: Raymond Duivesteijn, page 6: Dennis van de Rijdt)

Beatriz Ramo is teaching Architecture and Market at the AAS - Academie voor Architectuur en Stedenbow in Tilburg. The first edition of Architecture and Market in 2007 was a research course into the phenomena of superstar architecture and iconic buildings. The second edition of this course in 2008 is a combination of research and design around Shopping. The research will give us the knowledge to design new massive-shopping typologies for the city centres. These typologies will be understood as prototypes that could be implemented in every European City. The typologies should have a strong conceptual base. Rotterdam will be our case study to place the prototypes there, creating a coherence and continuous shopping activity from North to South.

ARCHITECTURE AND MARKET (Summary of the Presentation)

Context
There is still one function that can survive successfully without the touch of the almighty superstar architects in today’s world of icons: Shopping. While the exclusive boutiques capitulated years ago to the power of uniqueness, the Mall, the “shopping for the masses”, resists that temptation victoriously. Not only does it survive without super star architecture, but it has even left architecture behind. It is the “inside-out” icon: an uninteresting exterior with an overloaded interior. This interior is planned in excess and over-designed with baroque fountains and classic columns often resulting in an architectural caricature. This orgy of false perfection reminds us of a David Lynch movie, where the things that look too perfect always hide something perverse…However these places are always full of people, whether shoppers or mallrats. They feel good in there. The mall is safe, clean, and air-conditioned. Is this enough to create a successful urbanity? 
Although originally generated as an element of the city, shopping is so powerful today that it has proven to be able to exist even without the city. It just needs its citizens and if Mohammed won't come to the mountain…
But the reality is that the city needs shopping, because shopping has become the urban activity. Initially, shopping appeared where there was urban life. Today, the urban life appears wherever there is shopping, inside or outside the city.
The grandeur of the Agora, the perfection of the Market place, and the charm of the Arcade have degenerated into a tedious container decorated with a misunderstanding of architectonic styles.
Nevertheless, architecture should and can find the way to welcome massive shopping into the city centre. Ikea, the suburban big box by excellence, has started reversing this exodus and it opened its first store in the city centre last December in Coventry, UK. It comes with a city café at street level and extensive glazing, making it as transparent as possible. A month after the opening Ikea started planning the next store in a city centre in Southampton, UK.
How can we maintain the positive aspects of the Mall in City Centres? Can we turn the falsity into something real? What is the dress code that the City will impose on massive shopping to let it in? Which functions could we combine with it? Which shape will it have?...
How can we turn this marriage of convenience between City and Shopping into a love story?

Content:
In Europe, where we do not have extreme weather conditions, shopping can be more than an enclosed activity. It can be an urban link for the city. This course is not a rejection of the mall, but an exploration into new formats. From our position as architects and planners, we will accept the importance of shopping for the city’s urban life and we will design prototypes of big scale shopping for the inner city. These new typologies will be models that could be adaptable to the European city, sustainable in energy consumption and programme, and contributors to the improvement of urban city life.
Rotterdam is a very representative case of shopping. Public activity is pretty much framed by commercial hours. Urban life extinguishes every day after 18.00 and starts the next day at 10.00.
However, we find in Rotterdam significant and daring models of shopping in the city: De Lijnbaan of Van der Broek and Bakema, the Beurstraverse of Architecten Cie and John Jerde, or the future Markthal by MVRDV.

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