Architecture Of Consumption

When the human being begins using goods consciously, Consumption begins. The meaning of Consumption changes, the Consumer Society comes. This means an entire change in culture besides in economy. Consumer Culture never inherits the traditional culture before, but derives from the Consumer Society and the Consumer Age. With the globalization and the development of the information technology, Consumer Culture is spreading all over the world, changing the people's values and their ways of living, infiltrating almost all the disciplines.This thesis focuses on the contemporary retail architecture of the fashion brands in the eye of Consumer Cultrer, in order to find out the essence of the consumption architecture, which forms the cities and gives the decode of reading the cities.The retail architecture of the fashion brands has deep relationships with the Consumer Culture in history and figures the character of the Consumer Age. The contemporary retail architecture of the fashion brands makes efforts on forming diversity in the age of cosumption. And the key words are fashion and branding. In the research of the examples on the Omotesando in Tokyo, the fashion essential turns to be the consumption of space (purchaseing an experience in the space) and the consumption of culture (consuming the culture in the space). The fashion essential shows the answer to what the architecture is consumed. In the research of the examples of brand Prada, the branding essential turns to be the architecture media (display, multi-function space, science and technology system). The architecture then becomes the extending sensing of consumer and a symbol. The branding essential shows the answer to how the architecture is consumed.As the biggest developing country and the biggest market in the world, the retail architecture will go on being more and bigger in the developed cities in China. With no doubt, they are forming our streets and cities, and then will be the most important (maybe the only one) way to feeling and reading our cities.