Consumerism is more than simply buying lots of stuff, at its heart consumerism is an attempt to answer existential questions – how can I be accepted? How can I be pure? How can I be beautiful? How can I have meaning & purpose in life?
As a result it’s no surprise that companies who do this best have created spaces that borrow ideas from sacred spaces. Atlas Obscura invited cultural historian Erica Robles-Anderson, a professor at New York University, to an Apple Store in Manhattan. Here are some highlights:
Apple, more than any other technology company, has been able to access both these experiences, the individual and the collective. “They feel iconic, like an emblem of the personal,” says Robles-Anderson. “And yet it’s a cult. Right? It’s so obviously a cult.”
We knew it, Apple aficionados you are members of a cult.
“The oversized doors are fantastic,” says Robles-Anderson. “There’s no reason for them.” They’re there only to communicate that this place is important. Also, they’re heavy, like church doors, to give purpose and portent to the entry into the space.
We walk inside. It’s light and bright, and immediately in front of us, a wide staircase of opaque glass sweeps up to the second floor.
This is an old, old trick. “It’s used in ziggurats, even,” Robles-Anderson says. “It creates a space that emphasizes your smallness when you walk in. You look at something far away, and that makes your body feel like you’re entering somewhere sacred or holy.”
And in these new temples and cathedrals are new priests of divine knowledge.
The second floor has a different purpose than the first. This is the place where Apple’s equivalent of priests—the Geniuses—impart knowledge.
Read the whole thing here
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