01_The Legacy
of Department Stores
02_The Mall as a Temple
of Excess
Design et Désir
The main question has been raised : is design simply an instrument of blind consumerism ? This inquiry follows Hal Foster’s theory in his book Design & Crime (3), where he highlights the growing confusion between art and retail. To Foster, this border porosity results from an instrumentalisation of design, used as a vector of commercial attraction and market enhancement. From there, design could no longer be a discipline in its own right, but a tool at the service of commerce, transforming the practice of design into a set of simple mechanisms of seduction aimed at encouraging consumerism.
01_The Legacy of Department Stores
The genes of this phenomenon fond its roots in France with the birth of the department store and Universal exhibition in the 19th century. As the Decorative Arts Museum exhibition in Paris « La Saga des Grands Magasins : 1852-1925 » highlighted, these new temple to consumerism marked a fundamental shift in commercial scenography. Figures like Aristide Boucicaut, founder of Le Bon Marché, and Harry Gordon Selfridge, who revolutionized retail in London, created spaces where shopping became a leisure activity rather than a necessity.
These establishments introduced the concept of fixed pricing, replacing bargaining with a standardized shopping experience and are described as « cathedral of modern commerce » said Emile Zola in his novel The Ladies' Paradise (4). These shops represented an unprecedented model of architecture, designed to attract the eye of the consumer from the street through scenographic window displays. This early use of architecture as branding prefigured contemporary flagship stores, where spatial design is integral to storytelling. The department store set the precedent for retail spaces that function as both commercial and cultural landmarks.
3. Hal Foster, Design and Crime (and other Diatribes), Verso, Londres, 2002.
4. Zola, Émile. The Ladies' Paradise (French: Au Bonheur des Dames). Translated by Brian Nelson, Oxford World’s Classics, 2003.
02_The Mall as a Temple of Excess
William Leach, in Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (5), reveals how department stores didn’t just sell goods—they engineered desire. Shopping became ritualized, wrapped in spectacle, teaching consumers that fulfillment could be bought. This logic scaled up, birthing the American mall: a temple of indulgence, where consumption was elevated to a way of life. By centralizing commerce, stretching retail to its limits, and saturating space with artificial need, malls transformed shopping into an all-encompassing social activity.
Andrea Branzi sought to subvert this model with his social mall (6), a vision where commerce coexisted with culture, leisure, and civic engagement. He imagined spaces that adapted to urban life, fostering interaction rather than passive consumption. But capitalism has no interest in communal utopias—it demanded efficiency, control, and endless spending. Malls never evolved into cultural hubs; they became oversized, outdated machines, until the extent of the digital retailing took over.
Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City, Archizoom Associati, 1969–1972.
Utopian urban project challenging traditional city planning by proposing a continuous, homogeneous urban field.
Now, their remains haunt the landscape. Once symbols of economic power, malls are collapsing at an accelerating rate: by 2023, 25% of U.S. malls were expected to shutter within five years, with vacancy rates in some regions surpassing 40%. Abandoned giants like Randall Park Mall in Ohio stand as crumbling monuments to excess, their skeletal structures housing nothing but nostalgia and decay.
These dead malls (7) are the ghost towns of capitalism, proof that even the greatest temples of consumption are disposable. Desire has shifted to the digital universe, leaving behind only empty buildings and shattered glass—a fitting afterlife for a dream built on the illusion of permanence, swallowed by their own excess.
5. Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. Pantheon Books, 1993.
6. Branzi, Andrea. Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Skira, 2006.
7. Dead Mall: A term describing declining shopping malls with high vacancy rates, popularized in the early 2000s by urban explorers and journalists, notably Andrew M. D. Zipp.