If shopping has become the defining activity of public life then how does the city re-interpret consumption in light of economic and environmental uncertainty? Consumption is aligned with Capitalism and all its nuances. But what happens to the city when global Capitalism trips over its shoelaces? The masses wake from a powerful slumber lost in a city previously navigated by transaction, with debt forming a perpetual hangover from more vicarious days gone by. But transaction is magnetic, it is the most powerful force that architecture and the city can ever wish to use and it must be seized for its re-invention in the bust.

Retail-Park draws on re-use, curiosity and desire as the basis for transaction, with exchange as its currency. Goods, skills and services are re-valued by animating their use. 'Re-use' alludes not only to conventional notions of recycling but to celebrating life beyond ‘newness’, using the thrill of the retail experience in the service of positive intentions. Punctuated by benches, tables, power points and sports fields, Greenwich power station becomes the new trading floor as small-scale interfaces on an urban scale are sewn back into the city fabric. This most wondrous urban narrative reveals how a city can recycle itself and its contents.

Rachel Smith
07845 646246
rachel.smith@network.rca.ac.uk