Architectural Fashion Magazines

In a recent research project regarding the layout, commodity distribution and performativity of department stores, one of the most important findings was the way in which commodity distribution did not follow the layman's retail theories of attractor goods and impulse buys, but rather quite directly resembled something else: namely a nuanced but clear description by staging of the social roles the commodities for sale have in society. Closest resemblance to the spatial configurative description of difference and belonging could be found in fashion- and lifestyle magazines, and closest resemblance to the arrangement of home goods could be found in likening the entire home floors to apartments. In both cases not as direct copies but by contextual reference via the social situations, roles, and descriptions performed in and by space. This was remarkably much done through comfigurative positioning in space, in relation to some of the performative effects we have come to know are in part dependent on spatial configuration. This has later been expanded, if in rudimentary research, to examining retailer positioning in the urban fabric. Some of these patterns are very similar, suggesting there to be social logics of retail and consumption that respond to spatial situations in a more intricate way than simply providing more customers by more passers-by. Many of these responses or strategies are configurative in their nature both spatially and socially, and linked to the effects of spatial configuration on presence, movement, and being. This paper present some of these results in the light of recent findings in marketing theory, and suggests that this has implications for how complex buildings of the kinds of museums, department stores and libraries should be studied.QC 2010110