ABSTRACT
Shopping may seem an “ordinary” experience, but it is a highly orchestrated affair in environments specifically dedicated to moving merchandise. A “good shopper” is thought to have taste and a nose for bargains – a person both savvy and susceptible to the manipulations of advertising and display. To ignore resource depletion is, by default, to embrace a hopeless, imperiled existence, and to overlook the fact that shopping, collecting, and hoarding can also exhaust personal resources. In stores like the Paradise, design is the tease that tests shopper’s capacity for restraint. To the twenty-first-century shopper, the grocery store would hardly seem the venue of choice for an enjoyable evening out; but we have to remember that self-serve supermarkets were extremely rare in Italy in the 1960s. Designers also played their part in helping less discriminating shoppers choose breakfast cereals, shaving creams, cars, and cigarettes, all in the name of happier lives.
