Added Inspirations for the Project

My initial idea was to transform an already existing bakery with a Chinese restaurant on top as to create a craving need for food as people in their cars drive past or walk past the existing site on Beach Road. This was going to be achieved through a number of different ways, but basically by assaulting the three main senses discounting feeling: sight, smell and sound.

Ideas for these three areas are numerous.

In response to sight, especially in the buildings current condition, its exterior facade is quite closed off due to the industrial art deco brick exterior covering up most of the exterior wall with only small amounts of windows and openings. With the area being in Parnell but still being counted as a industrial-like zone, my aim would be to give the area a bit more life and even make the bakery and the restaurant a focal point in the area, accommodating areas of communion for lunch and meetings. The idea would be to "open" up the exterior facade letting in more light and more importantly allowing people from the street and the footpath to observe the bread and pastries being made giving the entire project a rustic feeling of localness that we dont experience these days with our supermarket consumer lifestyle while viewers can also see other people experiencing joy or happiness at being at the building. This last point is important and utilized by many businesses such as Dunkin Donuts in the Auckland CBD that directly flaunts its donuts on racks visible from the street, with the bright colours and lighting in addition to the smiling and laughing customers, eager to get their donuts, attracting more clients, thus the cycle continues. Starbucks also does this rather well and I have added this to my A1 sheet in that by the use of open glass curtain walls in their outlets, it offers both views from the inside out, letting in light and providing a more comfortable environment to the patrons but also allows those outside walking in the cold to get the sudden urge to join those enjoying the latte inside.

The main idea is envy. Jealousy. The feeling of needing this food and the associated perversity of needing this addition nourishment that metabolically we do not not. At our first class I got given the addition word of "optimization" as an extra factor of basis for my project and it directly shows it here. We as a 1st world country have optimized our point to the point where we can live on a few chocolate bars a day if we feel, a cupcake or too, a Bagel, in essence the energy is there. Thus the point of the bakery/restaurant conversion would be also while symbolically putting down our innate ability to give in to consumer feelings that at the same time, with a paradigm shift from a large quantity of junk food that we may purchase day to day, we can have a well made, traditionally created, quality piece of pastry, bread, etc which will satisfy us equally as much. The bakery provides a mean of less consumption, through equal if not greater satisfaction and a if not understood, but nonetheless completed reduction in perverse food over-consumption in our society, one person at a time.

Another sense that I wanted to explore was the use of smell to entice people to visit your store. Who hasn't experienced the sensation of waking up in the morning to just cooked bread, the smell of bacon, your favorite perfume at the store, the rose garden at the botanical gardens after rain? Smell is an integral part of our urges, with the idea being that during the morning time when the bakery would be function, air with the smell of bread and pastries would be forcibly pumped out onto the street, ideally creating an irresistible aroma for passing potential customers. Likewise at night, when the bakery is closed, the Chinese restaurant can do the same, wafting out the "like-it-or-hate-it" classic smell of Oriental food that just may invite the local resident to come and eat out.

The final sense would be that of sound, and while it is fairly hard to both hear the sounds created from Chinese food or baked goods, onus should change to that of customers hearing rather the pleasant noise of people enjoying themselves, sounds of laughing and pleasure. In comparison most people have experienced that when choosing between two restaurants to visit, most people will choose the one where the customers seem happier, where there is pleasant human interaction. In essence, where the atmosphere is more appealing and should be a major factor in the design of the exterior and interior renovations.