Product Description

Authors: Tae-Wook Cha, Chuihua Judy Chung, Jutiki Gunter, Dan Herman, Hiromi Hosoya, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong, Kiwa Matsushita, John McMorrough, Juan Palop-Casado, Markus Schaefer, Tran Vinh, Srdjan Jovanovich Weiss, Louise Wyman Design: Sze Tsung Leong and Chuihua Judy Chung

Book Description: Harvard Graduate School of Design's independent study seminar Project on the City aims at identifying and analyzing problems leading to and resulting from accelerated urbanization, as well as developing new philosophies to help our increasingly metropolitan planet cope with such rapid change. Taking the roles of both architect and sociologist, thesis advisor Koolhaas and his students travel and research in the first phase of each cycle, and write their theses in the second. The result of each project is a comprehensive, specialized study of the effects of modernization on the contemporary city.

During the years 1997 and 1998, Harvard's design graduates concentrated their studies on the phenomenon of shopping as a primary mode of urban life. As Sze Tsung Leong writes, "Not only is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping." Shopping is an integral part of urbanization - as shopping environments have indeed become the defining elements of the modern city. Research for this project, targeting Asia, Europe, and the United States, focused on marketing strategies, retail technologies, and the hybridization of cultural/recreational environments and the retail arena. Including essays ranging from "Disney Realism: Constructing the Copyrighted Environment" to "Three-Ring Circus: Shopping vs. Architecture," as well as hundreds of diagrams, floor plans, and photographs, The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping explores in-depth the ways in which shopping has refashioned the urban institution.

About the Authors: Chuihua Judy Chung is principal of Content Design Architecture Group in New York. With Sze Tsung Leong, she has assembled The Charged Void: Architecture, the complete architectural works of Alison and Peter Smithson. She is currently editing "Owning a House in the City", a study on low-income housing in the US.

Jeffrey Inaba, a partner of AMO (Architecture Media Organization) is writing a book on the work of Gordon Bunshaft and Kevin Roche.

Rem Koolhaas is principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, and the author of Delirious New York and the groundbreaking S,M,L,XL.

Sze Tsung Leong is principal of Content Design Architecture Group in New York, whose current projects range from residential design to graphic and environmental materials for human rights organizations. Sze Tsung Leong is the author and co-editor of Slow Space (Monacelli, 1998).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155085 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

Amazon.com Review
Like a favorite shopping emporium, The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping is a browser's paradise. This second installment of the Project on the City aims to investigate "a general urban condition undergoing virulent change." A big brick of a book with hundreds of photos and a bundle of essays by prominent designers, architects, and urban scholars, it traces the evolution of the marketplace and the environments we create for the purpose of getting and spending. From the great covered arcades of the 19th century to the museum displays of grand department stores to air-conditioned suburban malls, the book examines the ecology and life cycles of retail space the world over. Dip into the book anywhere for insights into acquisitive behavior. Newspaper clippings cite retail trends; a bar chart compares retail square footage by country (the U.S. tops them all). Some of the essays are already marked in yellow highlighter so you can scan for the main points. A 2,000-year timeline tracks major developments with theme concepts: Disney Space, Three-Ring Circus, Brand Zones, Shopping Landscapes. The book makes a wonderful reference for urban planners, but it's equally accessible to those who just want to shop 'til they drop.

Review
People should be coerced to go through this stuff, it's potent and vital. -- Creative Review, March 2002 (UK)

The book seems destined to become the year's hippest coffee-table accessory. -- The Washington Post, 3/9/02

This is a timely, fascinating and occasionally frightening survey of the world's favourite hobby. -- i-D Magazine, United Kingdom

About the Author
Chuihua Judy Chung is principal of Content Design Architecture Group in New York. With Sze Tsung Leong, she has assembled The Charged Void: Architecture, the complete architectural works of Alison and Peter Smithson. She is currently editing "Owning a House in the City", a study on low-income housing in the US.

Jeffrey Inaba, a partner of AMO (Architecture Media Organization) is writing a book on the work of Gordon Bunshaft and Kevin Roche.

Rem Koolhaas is principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, and the author of Delirious New York and the groundbreaking S,M,L,XL.

Sze Tsung Leong is principal of Content Design Architecture Group in New York, whose current projects range from residential design to graphic and environmental materials for human rights organizations. Sze Tsung Leong is the author and co-editor of Slow Space (Monacelli, 1998).

Customer Reviews

The language of retail
I'll start with the bad first: this book is too long, the essays are of uneven quality, and the layout is poor (if you are trying to read it, that is, and not just look at it). That being said, I think the overall product is excellent. This authors do not seek to answer questions but, instead, to raise them. Why is retail facing a crisis? How will advances in IT affect retail? What is changing about how we buy, what we buy, and why we buy?

The authors' premise is that shopping is a living entity, one with survival on its mind. Retail, they claim, has evolved as other beings have evolved: Some advances are foreseen while others come through chance, but all advances are in response to external forces. In the case of retail, the dominant relationship is between the shop and the shopper. As the shopper changes, so must the shop evolve, write the authors.

That this work is not a completed whole, but rather a piece where some assembly is required by the reader, is important in making this book work. The authors do not and cannot answer all their questions. The idea of "ulterior motives" - which teases at the implications of increased use of IT in retail and urban planning - is, to me, the central issue. The authors note the shift from "how does spacial design affect people" to "how does information design affect people". They note the importance of this shift for the future of shopping and present a history of retail as the vocabulary for which readers can begin to discuss these questions.

Because the authors have taken on the task of teaching the language of retail, readers may feel as if they are back in grade school English class - slogging through page after page of seemingly useless information that is not neccessarily connected to the next bit of information. However, if you spend some time playing with this information - looking at each bit of knowledge as building blocks that can be moved about and repositioned next to other bits of knowledge to uncover new and different patterns - this book comes alive.

excessive as ussual
It arrived just when i was needing it. Malls, shopping, consumerism, no-spaces, junk-spaces, the artificial-scape...finnaly Venturi&Brown met Koolhaas..(as i already suggested) but, despite all these, i still find it hard to pay such a thrilling money just because they didn't take the work of selecting the material. It seems to me lately that information grows endlessly and nobody is paying care to the "old customed" thing of selecting, choosing what's really important. IF THE BOOK WERE HALF ITS SIZE IT WOULD BE WORTH. As it is not, i must blame the authors for their happy "cut and paste and get the money" editorial strategy. I'm sad to say that i had to read it all and swallow even the most unmature essays to get to this conclusion. I suggest a combined reading of it with "No Logo" to get to an ecstasyc state of annoyment and claustrophobia.

The Retail Experience in 800 pages
If you work in retail management or are just curious (like me) about why and where folk shop, invest in this 800-page visual extravaganza. The key to survival with "Shopping" is page 27, where the contents are, and I suggest you turn over the page corner so you can find it easily. The rest of the book is text mixed up with a kaleidoscope of color photos, charts, maps, text panels, black pages, and color photos with white copy, etc, etc. The pace never slows down! Actually, it is not as bad as that because each of the 45 chapters starts on a spread and the right-hand page is always bright yellow with black type.

Naturally, the text covers all the big subjects, like Victor Gruen versus Jon Jerde (these are the guys you can blame/praise for all those malls) and everything else to do with shopping past, present, and into the future. I found very intriquing a chapter called Replascape, about companies that make artificial trees and shrubs for your local mall--and to keep up the pretense, in some locations, they are watered regularly. A large part of the book focuses on the U.S., but the rest of the developed world is not ignored. Shop till you drop in Europe, Japan, South America, Asia....

I would have liked an index in a book this size, but I still think the publishers should be proud that they have produced such an amazing book at a very affordable price.

Will that be cash or charge?