(Given) A column grid on Boston’s Tremont street (across from Boston Public Gardens) and a brief. (Brief) A small department store, to be located within the column grid, with a theme. (Theme) The five senses. Each luxury brand within the department store corresponds to one of the senses. (Touch) Lucian Pellet-Finet cashmere sweaters, (taste) Terrior Coffee, (sight) Zeiss camera lenses, (smell) CB I Hate Perfume, and (hearing) Other Music compact discs.

(Project Time frame) October –December, 2008 (Concurrently) 3 October, TARP bailout becomes law; 30 October, recession official; 19 Novemeber, DOW drops below 8,000 points. The student-architect doesn’t need to dig deep to have a cynical appreciation of the luxury department store brief.

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.

In a standard retail model, the first floor sells to most product. Does this demand the most expensive product be on the lower level? Or since these higher sales numbers are due in part to customers’ unwillingness to travel to upper levels, should the most popular (least expensive) product be on the lower level?

Both options are too non-specific to work as a parti. So: dedicate the whole lower level to populist capitalist pursuits: drinking coffee and buying music, and leave the high cost and high elevation of the luxury goods to divide the common pool of consumers. Each brand is given a space in the column gird, formed by partially enclosing cells of the grid with architectural surfaces. These enclosures or vignettes create an enclosed, floating, up-side-down world of luxurious delusion; while the grounded levels embrace all people.

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