My Grocery Rant

The belief that everyday life is important governs our work hits home to me. As an architect I have the desire to improve everyday activities. In class on Tuesday we attempted to define what everyday life is. To me, it is the part of life that includes, commuting, running errands, eating a meal, getting coffee. The tasks that happen almost everyday and are sometime more mundane than the other parts of the day. That is being said that work is supposedly the more exciting aspect of your day, which in our case I truly hope that is true. But in the end what do all of these tasks and events provide for architecture.

Lefebvre described this trivial everyday aspect as the basis of all social experience. With this I can agree. A family shares stories over a meal prepared. A shopper discusses the best way to prepare a pot roast with the butcher, or talks about investments with a financial planner at the bank. I run into friends at the coffee shop and socialize over events that had happened that week. There is something social about doing these tasks. Now how does architecture come into play here. I believe it comes into play when you are inspired to create something beautiful from the mundane task. If I walk into a grocery store that is well designed or has particular food pairings, it would inspire me to create a meal that I can share with others. On the flip side the comment about banking is almost out of date, with the development of new apps there really isn’t a need to walk into a brick and mortar store. Yet, I spent my summer working on CD’s to refurbish and build neighborhood banks. Looking back on it, it seemed strange that the banks were investing so much in that aspect of their business but I am forgetting the one thing that Lefebvre states, that this is the basis of social experience. They are investing in creating a community of people that use their service, so what if they don’t deposit their checks there anymore, but if they have a question on home loans, or other services they have created a meeting point for their customers. So after this ramble of errands, I do believe that there is extreme importance for providing well designed projects that impact these repeated tasks. I honestly admit that I do drive an extra 10 mins to go to the better grocery store for a better experience for that everyday/week task. The whole grocery store topic has me dreaming of the food halls and market of Europe, they are somewhat chaotic, but are highly inspiring spaces.