Cost per cubic inch for five discordant products:
Lucian Pellat-Finet $
76
33
Terrior Coffee Other Music $
How much of each product could I get for the price of:
1
31 $
CB I Hate Perfume
$
25
53
250
0
20
$
Zeiss Lenses
1 Zeiss lens
3 LPF sweaters
10 vials from CB I Hate Perfume
166 CDs from Other Music 2,225 lbs of Terrior coffee
Luxury at the brink The Givens: A column grid on Boston’s Tremont street (across from Boston Public Gardens) and a brief. The Brief: A small department store, to be located within the column grid, with a theme. The Theme: The five senses. Each luxury brand within the department store corresponds to one of the senses. To touch: Lucian Pellat-Finet cashmere sweaters, To taste: Terrior Coffee, to see: Zeiss camera lenses, to smell: CB I Hate Perfume, and to hear: Other Music compact discs. Concurrent economic happenings during the project period: 3 October: TARP bailout becomes law; 30 October: the economy officially in recession; 19 November: the DOW drops below 8,000 points. The student-architect doesn’t need to dig deep to have a cynical disposition towards the luxury department store brief and theme. Calculating the unit price of one cubic inch of each of the given products is an arbitrary but hyper-rational method to quantify and compare the five. Based on the unit price, the spectrum of relative “luxuriousness” or “economic-exclusivity” of the product field can be determined. Andrew Liebchen M.ARCH 2009, critic: Jeffery Katz