The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
It's Her (caffeinated) Factory

Tara Needham's terrific article "Faux Factory" will influence the way that I look at the design, style and architecture of Starbucks stores for a while:

But then I enter a Starbucks in the town over, and another in Penn Station, New York City, and I see the same exact pipes, belts, and shafts—an identical interior.

This factory-like interior is in fact designed, constructed, and duplicated in hundreds of stores.

I can think of only two points, the more explicit discussion of which would make her article more perfect:

1) Starbucks' role as factory of productivity, insofar as it is essential in enabling more workers to use more caffeine to work more hours, and

2) the unsafe, loud and dirty aspects of a "real" factory environment, which the designers of Starbucks stores would apparently like their customers to forget.

There's also no discussion of the stores' increasing role as a purveyor of music, a topic on which Needham would probably be qualified to reflect.

posted by TiR at 7:17 PM