Pack Your Bags and Get Ready to Move to Target Town

You know those communities that are always clamoring for a Target to come to their neighborhood? Well, gaze upon this wackiness, Target fanatics. LA's Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design developed this presentation for the recent International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam. It's a mish-mash of urban planning and big box development all in one, a way to "lure the retailor out of the box," explains Sherman. "It's a way for big box retailers to strategically locate themselves in urban infill areas," he says, adding this model would be an alternative to Americana at Brand or the Grove. After the jump, more description. There are three Target models, all of which are set in actual cities. (And no, Target itself had nothing to do with this ie, there was no sponsorship.)

----From the project description: "Thinking out of the Big Box explores how Target’s well-developed brand may be strategically deployed towards the incubation of communities that, while privately sponsored, are at the same time inclusive and heterogeneous. In Target’s case, these originate in the social “cosmology” that appears on its own website, from which the identities of three prospective audiences posited in this project are derived.

Each is keyed to a strategic “curation” or selection of its merchandise that locates surprising ties that bind otherwise separate demographic groups: TargetGreen (all things green, in all valences of the term); TargetPlay (recreation, performance, gaming, etc.) and TargetTown (urban life; car washing, commuter stations, post office/convenience store, gyms, workplaces, residential, etc.)

The three projects each offer an experience that the geographic context in which it is located decidedly lack: Town sits at the edge of the ex-urban edge (Tracy, CA); Green in an existing suburban power center parched but always sunny Phoenix; and Play on an urban infill site in open-space starved Brooklyn."

According to Sherman, this project was a finalist for a Urban Land Institute of LA award, and won an award from the Southern California Development Forum."
· Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design [Official Site]