ALLIES/METHODOLOGY

On the following pages, a series of “allies” to the ideas and intentions of this thesis will be described. Due to the currently broad nature of the ideas present in this book, there will be a series of five categories that the allies situate themselves in. The categories are as follows: Conceptualizing, Contextualizing, Mapping, Diagramming, and Visualizing.

YOU ARE READING AN ARTICLE PRINTED FROM PLACES, THE JOURNAL OF PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP ON ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, AND URBANISM. READ MORE AT PLACESJOURNAL.ORG.

All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walma How can arc rt hitects adapt Walmart’s logistical expertise to make better-performing environments?

J E S S E L E C AVA L I E R M AY 2 0 1 0

Sam Walton’s ledger, Walmart Visitors’ Center, Bentonville, Arkansas. [Images courtesy of the author except where noted.]

Walmart Stores, Inc. is a discount retailer based in Bentonville, Arkansas.

In 2008 it earned 400 billion dollars and had a combined floor area larger than the island of Manhattan.

If Walmart were a country, it would be the world’s 26th largest economy, just behind Austria. Walmart is also the largest private employer in the United States, with a workforce of over 1.4 million, second only to the federal government. Charles Fishman, in The Walmart Effect, describes the company as “carefully disguised as something ordinary, familiar, even prosaic. But in fact, Walmart is a completely new kind of institution: modern, advanced, potent in ways we’ve never seen before . . . Walmart has outgrown the rules — but no one noticed. ” 1 Charlie Rose, before introducing Lee Scott, then Walmart’s CEO, as a guest on his talk show, proclaimed Walmart “the most powerful company ever to exist. ” 2 It is, in fact, the company’s specialization in logistics — borne out through obsessions with efficiency, information and distribution — that has made it the sophisticated corporation Fishman describes. Given that Walmart’s operations are fundamentally concerned with territory, examining them closely yields insight into some of the mechanisms now at work shaping cities.

Left: Pamphlet Architecture containing “snafu” (aabookshop.com) Right: “All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart” (placesjournal.org)

CONCEPTUALIZING: “snafu” and “All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart”

Two readings that were critical in the early ideation stages of this thesis were LTL’s “snafu” and Jesse LeCavalier’s “All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart”. The former was important for its notion of architecture’s “surrationalism”; that is, “seek[ing] a creative logic to engender disquieting associations between or within the everyday.”1 The latter’s importance is for its explication of corporate influence and power, most effectively with its story of Walmart’s pre-Hurricane Katrina preparations, reading:

Even before the storm made landfall, the company had anticipated supply shortages and had trailers loaded and ready in their Brookhaven, Mississippi, distribution center. Right after the storm, Walmart dispatched trucks stocked with supplies to affected areas in Louisiana and Mississippi — often ahead of the National Guard.2

1. David J. Lewis, Paul Lewis and Marc Tsurumaki, Pamphlet Architecture 21: Situation Normal....(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998).

Images of APWA’s Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century (APWA)

CONTEXTUALIZING: American Public Works Association’s “Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century”

Gathering an understanding for what an “American Megaproject” already looks like be would be critical for the speculative design of a future megaproject in the American context. The American Public Works Association recognizes the following ten projects in their list of the “Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century”1:

-The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), -The Grand Coulee Dam & Columbia River Basin Project, -Tennessee Valley Project, -The Panama Canal, -Interstate Highway System, -The Reversal of the Chicago River, -The Hoover Dam - Boulder Canyon, -St. Lawrence Seaway/Power Project, -Hyperion Treatment Plant, -Golden Gate Bridge

Bay Area Commute Diagram (Nelson, Rae 2016)

MAPPING: “An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions”

This study conducted by Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae utilized datasets of commuter flows to derive an understanding of the United States as a complex series of megaregions, as opposed to the existing delineation of fifty states1. Using data as abstract as commuter routes and travel times to redraw the map of the United States is a methodology that the mapping exercises undertaken in the context of this thesis will aspire to. The speculative future entailed in this thesis dictates that what we know as the United States is transformed into a collection of corporate territories, dedicated strictly to their economic and physical dominance. After the selection of megaregions to further study, the next step will be to do a series of maps of each territory. Alongside the individual mappings, it will be valuable to examine the territories in relation to each other also through mapping.

1. Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae, "An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions," PLOS ONE, (November 2016): https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166083

Forming diagrams for Copenhill/Amager Bakke (Bjarke Ingels Group)

DIAGRAMMING: Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and United Network Studio (UNStudio)

These maps will also be used to create further diagrams, which would be of a simple yet striking graphic nature. The intent behind these two styles of representation are to portray the realistic understanding of the territories versus a corporate “digestible” version. Diagrams would take inspiration from the likes of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and United Network Studio (UNStudio); this clear, streamlined (arguably sterile) style of drawing would lend itself to how corporations would view their actions, and a very marketable way of justification of said actions.

Left: Stills from Liam Young’s “New City” (ArchDaily.com) Right: Still from Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (USATODAY.com)

VISUALIZING: Liam Young, Keiichi Matsuda, Superstudio, Dunne and Raby, RVTR, Blade Runner 2049, Total Recall, The Fifth Element, etc.

Another facet to explore would be at a more zoomed-in scale, regarding the impact of the corporations on existing urban contexts. This practice would constitute of a mixture of both previously mentioned approaches, combining maps, diagrams, and renderings. This would give a more personalized impression of this speculative future; a series of vignettes depicting firstperson views, a series of maps explaining the context of the vignettes, and a series of diagrams explaining the corporate view and attitude towards these megaprojects and megaregions. The tonality of the thesis is certainly not optimistic, and the directions taken with certain megaprojects could be dystopian. Aesthetic allies are to be found in the visuals from architectural minds and other speculated futures from the world of cinema. There would also be exploration in physical models, most likely with 3D printing or other forms of digital fabrication.