Even the most determined of shoppers has at one stage in their life been through the experience of getting lost in a large store or shopping centre. At those moments, it is easy to revert to that child inside; the one who stands a blubbering mess in the shopping centre after wandering off and losing their parents, and who thinks for a moment that they will have to spend the rest of their lives on their own, scavenging for food in the bins of McDonald's and sleeping each night in the mini display beds of the bedding department. But shops generally aren't designed for lost children, they are typically designed to entice the shopper and encourage them to get lost in the world of consumerism. Most modern shops are designed to ensure that you spend the maximum time possible within. The best example of this is the controlled shopping environment is the one-way system in operation in an IKEA store.
Entering a large IKEA Store, the customer is first presented with the display area of the store, where all the goods are laid out in rooms, mimicking the home. The consumer is shown how they can recreate a sense of IKEA's Swedish style in their own homes. This section, is one-way. Arrows point forwards, and customers are told to keep walking through the display area to reach the marketplace where they can actually purchase the item. The display must remain intact for the next customer who will arrive into this theatre of home furnishings. At points throughout the store there are secret paths whereby the individual can take a short-cut to skip certain sections, but these are difficult to spot and are shielded by doors. The result is that each trip to an IKEA store is carefully choreographed to control the manner in which the visitor receives the messages and images of domestic consumer reality.
IKEA shows us how to achieve an ideal domestic environment. You can see how the consumer world of global capitalism can be domestised and recreated in a store and neatly packaged to be self-assembled at home. It is a real-life plan or instructional booklet on how to achieve the ideal domestic environment. I believe that it is in the display area of an IKEA store, that capitalism achieves the true colonisation of the domestic sphere. It is a highly controlled spatial representation of home life. Each realistic display is ingeniously designed, with storage spaces and recessed lighting to show off our personal possessions. The items for sale are not just presented on their own, they are put into context. They are put into a constructed reality,which can be collected before the checkout, then purchased and carried home in the car, and self-assembled in the shoppers home. No longer do the marketers have to tell people how to consume, they simply have to suggest how to consume it and the shopper can recreate them in their own home. It is a mimetic quality which is extremely powerful and seductive. How does this relate to the development being planned by LandProp Holding in East London?
Attempting to capitalise on the Olympic regeneration in East London, LandProp Holding B.V., a part of the Inter Ikea Group (The holding company for IKEA) submitted an application for a large mixed use development called Strand East. It was validated by the London Borough of Newham on 28 February 2012 and construction is currently underway. Strand East promises to create an ideal living experience in the re-imagined East End of London. This site will not house an IKEA store. Instead we will see a mixed use development, with a range of apartments sizes, a hotel and other retail and community uses. Along with over 1200 apartments, the developers explain that it will include "620,000 sq. ft. of space for businesses including local shops, cafes, restaurants and other community facilities, together with a 350 bedroom hotel. Around 25% of the development will be open space including, a riverside park that will run along the western edge of the site overlooking the River Lee Navigation".
What is being built is an idealised version of urban life, intricately designed to create a desirable vision of life in the city. The Strand East development is far for the first of these urban regeneration projects, but it is a useful example to illustrate the pattern that is emerging. By allowing private developers to create these "hybrid... comprehensive mixed use development(s)" control is being handed to "the market" to dictate how we will live. The 25% of this development which it is claimed will be open space, is not public space. There most likely will be restrictions on who and when can access this space. While the ideals behind these high quality spaces may be based on strong urban design principles, it will be up the property owner who can control what type of activities will occur there. This will most likely become another enclave of a globalised consumer culture, lined with specimen trees, granite paving and outdoor seating for paying customers. In this space, it is the non-paying occupier, who will fill the role of the lost child. Shouting for their parents will not help, instead they will most likely asked to move on by the private security firm who will surveil this space. When we allow more and more of the space outside our home to become privatised we drift deeper into the dream of global consumer culture, and move further away from the realities of urban life. It may be the case that we are all already lost, but have forgotten about it and kept going by eating in McDonald's and sleeping in our IKEA beds.
Comedian/Filmmaker Mark Malkoff moves into IKEA, greets the staff and picks out a bed.
