August 15, 2010
When Shopping Was Sociable
D/R’s founder, architect Benjamin Thompson, wanted to turn shopping into less of a chore, more of a creative enterprise. Thompson wrote in the Boston Globe in 1971, 18 months after his glass-walled, concrete-framed new D/R headquarters opened in Cambridge:
Just as Harvard Yard is an agora and Washington Street a fair, D/R lives in the tradition of the marketplace. Because good markets and fairs thrive on movement and action, they don’t happen in architectural “masterpieces” but in lively spaces that mix people and functions.
So the task of building anew on Brattle Street, with its beautiful residential scale and bustling intensity around Harvard Square, was a complex prospect. Could we share the new D/R with the outer world, yet keep the sense of intimacy within? Could we achieve crystalline openness without the icy purity of most glass facades? Could we blend today’s structure with Longfellow’s neighborhood, mix children and elders, old and new, store and street into a comfortable continuity of color and optimism that life is naturally all about?
Thompson’s thinking about “lively spaces that mix people and functions” led him to a second career, during and after D/R, as the joint inventor, designer and planner of the “festival marketplace” with wife Jane Thompson. As in the D/R stores, their idea at Faneuil Hall (and later Harbor Place and South Street Seaport) was to enliven old buildings with new shopping, eating and mingling experiences, curating (to appropriate a trendy word) the stores as he had curated the D/R merchandize for a mix of price points and audiences, and adding lots of free performances, classes, and good smells. However sad the festival marketplaces now seem, overrun with chain stores and tourist restaurants, the Thompsons’ ideas about retail — hand-selecting the goods, maximizing the sidewalk display, re-using past architecture — are still at work today.
In the introduction to Jane Thompson’s and my new book, Design Research:Â The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes, Design Within Reach founder Rob Forbes cites the Apple stores as the closest thing: even at 11 p.m., “The experience felt like a community center for people with shared aesthetic values; it was certainly more than just a store.” The Apple stores provide stunning architecture, a marketplace experience (high ceilings, goods laid out on tables), multiple price points (MacBook Pro to iPod case), instruction (free workshops), community (gathering ‘round the screens.) I imagine D/R’s fans would have been as shocked as Apple users that one could perform the tasks of everyday life without something from the store.
Today Brooklyn is an epicenter of the same kind of foodism, though all trends point toward vintage Americana rather than classic French. (I pickled last Christmas, and felt very au courant.) And in Brooklyn, on Sundays, there is a place where you can find stunning architecture, a marketplace experience, multiple price points and community. Instruction is not explicit, but food is made before your eyes, and vendors selling bags of malt mixes for home brewing spend a lot of time in earnest explanation.
The flea, because of its temporary status and atomized nature, can’t take charge of the room, which is a loss. (Whereas the architect of the new Limelight Marketplace, tagged “a festival of shops” and clearly Faneuil Hall-inspired, has taken far too much charge of the former church. Once you are inside, it is hard to see the stained glass windows for the awnings, display cases, and open-tread staircases scissoring past them. Not to mention the dreadful white paint job.) To have someone like Thompson mixing and matching the wares into home-like vignettes would provide some visual drama at floor level, and more focus for the vendors. In the booths you find the same searching eye, range of goods new and old, crafted here and abroad, small-scale and statement pieces as were available at D/R. But Thompson knew how to show them to best advantage.
A blending of all three might bring us closer to Thompson’s original idea of the mix: Apple’s clear sense of design, Limelight’s blend of culinary and visual treats, the flea’s feeling of community. For the Thompsons never meant D/R or Faneuil Hall to be just about sales: the point was to provide an opportunity for encounters, bringing people out of their shells and into parts of the city that had been underutilized. They also wanted to make the best of design accessible, not let it get shut up in a museum or a to-the-trade showroom. Touching the goods was an essential part of attracting and educating the consumer. The Thompsons figured out a way for preservation to feel like a festival, not a final exam. And every time we eat an Asia Dog in a bank vault, or buy shoes in a nave, we feel their legacy.
Observed
View all
Observed
By Alexandra Lange
Related Posts
Equity Observer
L’Oreal Thompson Payton|Essays
‘Misogynoir is a distraction’: Moya Bailey on why Kamala Harris (or any U.S. president) is not going to save us
Equity Observer
Ellen McGirt|Essays
I’m looking for a dad in finance
She the People
Aimee Allison|Audio
She the People with Aimee Allison, a new podcast from Design Observer
Equity Observer
Kevin Bethune|Essays
Oh My, AI
Recent Posts
Make a Plan to Vote ft. Genny Castillo, Danielle Atkinson of Mothering Justice Black balled and white walled: Interiority in Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”L’Oreal Thompson Payton|Essays
‘Misogynoir is a distraction’: Moya Bailey on why Kamala Harris (or any U.S. president) is not going to save us New kids on the bloc?Related Posts
Equity Observer
L’Oreal Thompson Payton|Essays
‘Misogynoir is a distraction’: Moya Bailey on why Kamala Harris (or any U.S. president) is not going to save us
Equity Observer
Ellen McGirt|Essays
I’m looking for a dad in finance
She the People
Aimee Allison|Audio
She the People with Aimee Allison, a new podcast from Design Observer
Equity Observer
Kevin Bethune|Essays