Boxes. Supermarkets in Towns

The reign of hard-discount with its inevitable warehouses continues to tighten its grip. From the cradle to the grave, packaging provided.

Since the beginning of the 19th century hard-discount trading, concerned only with goods manufactured in large quantities at a low price, has continued to grow, with the universal approval of consumers but at the same time dismissed by society.

To explain this paradox Les Boîtes has brought together the views of writers, elected representatives and sociologists on two centuries of modernisation in retail trading. After being accused of being responsible for the death of the corner shop, for the last ten years there have been complaints about the landscaping and architectural structures that these "boxes" impose on towns. The book lingers on this aesthetic action, which has altogether too much of a consensus of opinion to be well thought through.

However it is initially concerned with the fundamental stakes: consumer goods are besieging our lives and our towns in an ever more intimate and totalitarian way.