What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
The lecture names the mechanism before the session sends you out to find it. Twelve weeks, twelve theory drops — Debord’s spectacle, de Certeau’s strategies and tactics, Perec’s inventory, Baudrillard’s simulacrum, Augé’s non-place — each one handed over just before that week’s fieldwork puts it to use, never after.
Nothing Welcomes You
What the automatic door is actually doing, and why the semester starts here instead of at the shelves
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
The Store's Real Floor Plan
Why the shortest path to what you need is never the path the aisles give you
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
A Wheel That Fails on Purpose
Trolley geometry as a designed failure, and what a leash looks like when it has four wheels
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Shelf Space Is Rented
Perec's inventory method turned on a single aisle, and what eye level turns out to cost
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
The Aisle's Momentum, Spent for You
Détournement as a way of reading — and eventually rewriting — the endcap's manufactured urgency
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
One Lap Is the Whole Store
The fresh wall's perimeter loop, and the fieldwork brief that turns it into evidence
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
The Last Unscripted Minute
Why the queue is the one part of the building nobody designed, and what that makes it worth
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
The Job the Machine Didn't Keep
Self-checkout as de-skilling in reverse, and the surveillance apparatus hiding inside a convenience
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
A Tempo You Didn't Choose
Retail sound design as pacing, zone by zone, and why the silence you thought you shopped in was never silent
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
The Toll Disguised as a Reward
The loyalty card read through Baudrillard's simulacrum, as a fee paid in data rather than currency
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
Nowhere, Exactly Repeated
Augé's non-place, found in the car park before you've even reached the automatic door
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
What the Receipt Leaves Out
Closing the argument the door opened in week one, and setting the counter-mapping brief
Week 12 · 10 May 2027