"I Came Here Just to Buy Milk"

Image: New York Daily News

I came across this article recently regarding Supermarket Architecture. In a nutshell it tells us that they are designed to encourage us to buy more.

Having worked in a grocery store for probably 10+ years of my life I have to say "duh". As the article states the necessities are in the back forcing shoppers to navigate through aisles of brightly colored packages, inevitably leading to the all too common phrase at the cash register: "I came here just to buy milk!" as the cashier finds 30 items in front of them.

Grocery stores are a fascination of mine (as well as the bane of my existence; I would like fewer options sometimes).  In my European travels I found myself drawn to grocery stores. They are so different in Europe. There are fewer options, making your time more efficient. There is always fresh produce outside and a bakery right in the front offering the daily necessities that every European picks up on the way home. The aisles are tiny and barely fit two people side by side; don't even think about using a cart! They are made from a maze of spaces as builders did not have large open grocery store spaces in mind when they were building hundreds of years ago. And when they are out of a product they are out of it until they get around to stocking it everyone just lives with it because that's how it is.

I recall being lost several times in a particular grocery store in Florence; it just kept going and going, offering turn after turn into what clearly used to be...not a grocery store. Efficiency and necessity are the name of the game in most places other than the U.S. Another difference that cannot go unmentioned is the open air markets that run rampant abroad. The U.S. is picking up on that trend, but not often enough. On a more recent trip abroad my husband and I went to the store for staples like bread, wine and salami every morning, then shopped the Cours Saleya in Nice for fruit and any other small, fresh items we needed for breakfast and lunch that day. The difference is that it was open every day, rain or shine; we could count on it, and back at home the outdoor market is open on Saturday morning from May to October leaving our steeply-priced green beans to mold by the end of the week.

In my time working in a grocery store and now, as a regular shopper, I think about the things that would make them more efficient for the worker and the shopper. They really don't mix, is the conclusion I came away with. Shoppers want it and they want it now, so the store has to have a large supply waiting in the back for the moment it's out on the shelf. I can tell you that I lost a lot of weight running from the front of the store to the back time after time searching in piles of canned goods for that one can of Fried Onions that might have been left after the Thanksgiving rush. While I'm walking the quarter mile to get to the back stock at least 2 other people stop me for a request. By the time I get back to the original customer they would have waited for far too long and sometimes they would be gone. I couldn't blame them.

So what is the solution? How do we please both parties with good design? If you have even an inkling of a solution please enlighten the readers in the comment section below.

Young Minds

Ah, young minds. So innocent and open. It's amazing to see what a kid can do with 20 sticks of spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of masking tape and a marshmallow.

A structural engineer and I were invited to do a quick lesson for the STEM Institute (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) a couple weeks ago. We decided to go in together and show how Engineers and Architects work together.

We asked each group of about 15 students to work together in small teams to build the tallest structure that would hold a marshmallow at the top. Marshmallows are light, or so they seem...

We had a variety of structures and the tallest of the day that held the marshmallow for longer than 5 seconds was 19". Not too shabby for what they were given. What was great is that every student was aware that the triangle was the strongest shape and they all went for it in some capacity. The string was the least utilized, though one group was really close to figuring it out how to use it like cable on a suspension bridge.

The session gave us a lot of opportunity to explain simply how buildings stand up and how collaboration between disciplines makes it happen. I explained how an architect really can't get a whole lot done without a team of engineers helping to bring it all together and make a building function. The teams that performed the best worked together with each of them contributing in some capacity. It was a good reminder to myself what an important (and often difficult) job it is to keep all the parts running to eventually come together to one vision.

Interns aren't generally the conductor of the orchestra, but I have been given a number of opportunities in my time at Shive-Hattery to take a lead role and do my best to bring the group together. Luckily there is always a project architect looking over my shoulder. It's a role that I have really come to like; it's tough, but incredibly rewarding, especially when things go well.

The key is teamwork and constant collaboration. When those things are carried out in an orderly fashion things just seem to go better. 7th graders did it, we can too!