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Rating: 
Summary: Latest Design Accessory for the Bubble Economy
Review: For a volume that purports to be scholarly research from Harvard University, it incorporates preciously little hard facts or empirical data from the commercial retail industry, aside from the colorful graphics, it represents, at best, an amateurish take on a global economy in the form of bumper stickers rather than any form of serious analysis. Mr. Koolhaas' customary "Firehose" approach to editing - massive amount of unedited images and unaccredited charts and information featuring slogans sufficiently amorphous as to allow readers to draw whatever conclusion they want. Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design) students would tell you that the whole book is a somewhat cynical exercise for Mr. Koolhaas to use his academic assistants to produce "research" that attempted to justify intellectually what he was designing for the Prada stores in NY, LA, etc. (a "cash cow" for Koolhaas' architectural firm according to his chief assistant) But since Koolhaas is an established and bankable star, none of the participants are complaining. In the end, most of the essays managed to emphasize an approach to architecture that happened to coincide with projects by Mr. Koolhaas. For example, while the essay "Depato" give a reasonably detail account of the development of Japanese department stores in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, but then it focused on design features such as the "Bunkamura" or cultural village, art galleries and roof gardens that some stores had added in order to attract customers to shore up declining business. (Koolhaas advocated adding lecture hall in Prada stores but was vetoed for taking up too much valuable retail space). The essay never examined, let alone proposed solutions to, the real cause behind the decline of department store sales - the rise of discount shopping during the decade-long economic recession). "Captive-Airmall" amiably speculates on the pros and cons of spaces designed for efficiency and what it meant to operate in an highly impersonal environment. However, it failed to mention the real reason that gave rise to such environment - airline de-regulation that began in the United States which eventually turned airports into corporations responsible for generating their own revenues and thus jump-started the airport retail business. Much like a fashion product by Prada, this book is very useful if you want to brag about how intellectually curious and, at the same time, up-to-the-minute-Wallpaper-hip you are at home or the office - it's the latest design accessory for the 1990s bubble economy. It is disappointing to see that even a respectable institution such as Harvard has succumbed to the forces of the marketplace.
Rating: 
Summary: A virtual shopping spree
Review: Having leafed through this book and "Great Leap Forward," I find myself bemused as to what all the fuss is about. Koolhaas is apparently oh so cool! according to a recent Newsweek. There is little that is new here unless one considers placing an escalator inside Le Corbusier's Dom-ino skeleton novel. It seems that Koolhaas and his chums have once again had great fun cutting and pasting from the past and present, to create a virtual tour through their cluttered minds of consumerist fantasies.
Rating:
Summary: A virtual shopping spree
Review: Having leafed through this book and "Great Leap Forward," I find myself bemused as to what all the fuss is about. Koolhaas is apparently oh so cool! according to a recent Newsweek. There is little that is new here unless one considers placing an escalator inside Le Corbusier's Dom-ino skeleton novel. It seems that Koolhaas and his chums have once again had great fun cutting and pasting from the past and present, to create a virtual tour through their cluttered minds of consumerist fantasies.
Rating: 
Summary: The language of retail
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The language of retail
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: So very important
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: The Retail Experience in 800 pages
Review: 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?
Rating: 
Summary: excessive as ussual
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: another choose-your-own-adventure from Koolhaas and friends
Review: Mutations has been my default book of choice for months now--carefully researched and culled, it postulates a theory of urban design while providing ALL the source materials for the reader to form their own opinions. This book is another in the series--although this time from the Harvard Project on the City only (Mutations was a collaborative work with several other theorists). Laden with magazine clippings, graphs, charts, trivia, photographs, epigrams and essays, this book will delight, confuse, and dismay you for months to come. An urban design DIY montage!
Rating:
Summary: So very important
Review: This beautifully produced book is another in a series from Taschen and it's one of the most important of the new century. What Koolhaas has done with the Prada stores alone is fascinating, but here it's only the tip of the iceberg. Anyone interested in architecture, space planning, design, and, of course, shopping in general should have this book. It's the "Why We Buy" of our time.
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