ABSTRACT
REFLECTIONS ON NEW URBANITY IN THE ERA OF THE ON-LINE SHOPPING Authors: Dr. Cristian Suau - Welsh School of Architecture (UK), suauc@cardiff.ac.uk Marga Bauza - Welsh School of Architecture (UK)
Untitled, Barbara Kruger (1987)
The Urbanity of the Everywhere If ‘Sense of Place' constitutes an essential motto for many contemporary cities, then it implies a combination of physical and human aspects within the urban society. Nevertheless, the notion of place becomes non-specific, generic, someone diffuse. Cities inevitable live in the ‘Culture of Speed’ ruled by the factor of lightness, instantness and genericness. Nowadays cities compete with each other. As result they are following a systematic hybridisation of the cityscape where trading and communicational networks have drastically been modified. Our planet, mostly in emerging economies, is experiencing a radical transformation in the way customers behave and how retail architecture merges as a vital mechanism in the functioning of the market intermediation. Shopping is experienced by people as amusement. Retail urbanism is defined as a market space (tangible or not) that affects the relationship between supply and demand. Classically it uses 3 key principles: variety, novelty and service. Nevertheless, the staging of the market relationships can follow these premises or can attempt to subvert them. So, shopping can be experienced either warm and cosy or cool and harsh. It implies that the new retail architecture could be found in transgressive spaces that seek to erase, melt or confuse the spatial boundaries between buyers and customers. These effects should to be surveyed beyond aesthetic viewpoints. This study attempts to reflect on what make them more adaptable to overcome changeable urban markets. In doing so, it will be focus in the phenomenon of new places for shopping in European cities.