The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2

by Rem Koolhaas (Editor), Rem Koolhaas (Editor), Sze Tsung Leong (Editor)

For several years, 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."" ICK! So why did we pick up this book? Because Hannah at Quimby's told us to. Hannah's right; the design is very impressive, even if the motivation for it creeps us out.

Genres: Architecture, Design, Cultural Studies, Economics, Theory, Urbanism

800 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.
He is seen by some as one of the significant architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation, by others as a self-important iconoclast. In 2000, Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008, Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014.

Reviews

[Mon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has an entire essay on air-conditioning.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book by default limits itself to three stars because it (in typical Rem fashion) violates two basic principles I think [most] books should adhere to: that they be relatively inexpensive and, more importantly, that they be portable. This $50 behemoth needlessly measures in at 800 pages, much of which is just photos and graphs that could've been designed far more economically. So too could many of the essays been combined, condensed, or edited out completely. There is an everything AND the kitchen sink editorial policy at work that no doubt is meant to capture the many sides of shopping, but instead just makes this a book for browsing rather than for reading. It's like a big magazine; there should be ads (it would've lowered the cover price).

Okay, with my rant out of the way..... There is actually a lot of good material in the book. The sections on Victor Gruen and Jon Jerde, the architect that built the first completely enclosed mall and the one most identified with the mall form now, respectively, are both great. Even better is the discussion of air conditioning and escalators, how these infrastructural elements made the mall possible, both physically and conceptually. Mr. Koolhaas's essay is dense with ideas, despite being written and designed in a style that proves form should not always follow content (it was about "junkspace"). And, speaking about "Junkspace," the authors throughout fall into the trap of coming up with catchy buzzwords for their ideas. Some of these make sense and are useful; most fall flat and are annoying.

Worth a look, if you are interested in shopping as a built phenomenon, but certainly don't feel the compulsion to read it cover to cover.

[Vanlilith]

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[Marc Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bible for anyone involved in urbanism and retail economics.

[Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first thing I bought with my first paycheck from my first job while in college.