Consuming Scenography: The Shopping Mall as a Theatrical Experience

Description

Consuming Scenography offers an insight into contemporary scenographic practice beyond the theatre. It explores the ways in which scenography is used to create a global cultural impact and accelerate profits in the site-specific context of themed shopping malls. It analyses the effect of the architectural, aesthetic, spatial, material and sensory aspects of design through their performative encounters with consumers in order to offer a better understanding of performance design. In the first part the author explores the spatial seduction of an enclosed market space and traces the origins of scenographic temporality in permanent architectonic spaces for trade and commerce, from ancient Greek and Roman roofed markets and Oriental bazaars to 19th-century arcades and department stores to modern-day shopping malls. The second section addresses the site-specific theatricality of the shopping mall, considering the use of performative aspects of scenography in the creation of corporate identity. It engages with production and consumption of experience in themed shopping malls, using historical, aesthetical, social and political lenses. In the final section, the author intertwines fluidity of market changes with flexibility of scenographic matter, drawing attention to both contradictions and prospects that merging of scenography and architecture can bring along. Considering a variety of case studies of themed shopping malls, including the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, Terminal 21 in Bangkok, the Villaggio in Doha and Montecasino in Johannesburg, as well as further examples from Europe, USA and Asia – this book provides a wide-ranging critical examination of the ways in which scenographic thinking and practices are exploited in wider cultural contexts for impact, branding, and higher profits. Cover Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introducing Consuming Scenography 1 Staging Consumer Seduction: A Brief History 1.1 The market enclosure as ascenographic principle 1.2 Industrialising pleasure: Shopping arcades and department stores 1.3 Post-war functionalism: Shopping malls 2 Framing Consumption in Late Capitalism 2.1 Entertainment, please! 2.2 Theming the identity of consumption 2.3 Drama on sale 3 Themed Malls as a GlobalTrend 3.1 Make me look older: Montecasino 3.2 Shopping for education: The Ibn Battuta Mall 3.3 A boat trip to fantasy land: The Villaggio Mall 3.4 Have a safe flight: Terminal 21 4 Producing Experience 4.1 The magic of Disneyization 4.2 Technological wizardry 4.3 Aquatic fairy tales 5 Consuming Experience 5.1 Flâneurs or active consumers? 5.2 Surface semiotics 5.3 The body in the forged reality 6 The Deceitful Charm of Scenography 6.1 The echoes of history 6.2 The aesthetic universe 6.3 Social interaction with a price tag 6.4 Public space as a political stage 7 Spatial Flexibility: A Yearning 7.1 The fluidity of market changes 7.2 Flexibility matters 7.3 Double-crossed by urban dreams 7.4 Responsibility in the final act Notes References Index