MONO-POLY-DOLLAR


Nearly 1 in 3 new stores opening in the US is a Dollar General (DG),1 and, as of September 2021, of the 4,799 announced retail openings, 1,626 are new dollar stores, 1,050 of which are owned and operated by Dollar General Corporation, the country’s largest “small-box” retailer,2 and the largest and most influential of the dollar-store triumvirate: Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General. The pandemic-fueled downturn in the economy, along with the company’s century-old legacy of innovating its retail model to meet contemporary needs with aggressive expansion, has resulted in an unprecedented proliferation of the dollar-store economy.

In 2023, an interdisciplinary research and design studio and seminar, operating at both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of New Mexico, will use Dollar General Corp.- to examine the country’s environmental, economic, and racial fault lines, and highlight this understudied vernacular typology as a weapon of discourse and agent of climate activism. The course asks students to reimagine the architectural canon, challenge existing value systems, and use the local and familiar as catalysts for change. Through this process, students will test their claims for how small-box architecture has the potential to create new climate regimes.

Working collaboratively across both universities, students will interrogate the DG machine - from its copy-and-paste building design and tactical anti-permitting strategies that enable it to proliferate and undercut its competitors, to the ways it affects large-scale agricultural practices and small-scale domestic realities. They will use their findings to test the social, spatial, and environmental consequences of making a series of small, measured disruptions in the DG system, then compile their speculative proposals into a book and paired exhibition that will be comprehensible to people outside of architecture and the academy. The book will retail in the 18,200+ DG general stores and, therefore, must be legible to a broad audience. The exhibition,Dollar General Futures, will involve designing and producing a panoply of climate-responsive objects for sale in a future DG store.

Small-box dollar stores are critical to the function of our daily lives but are underexplored in architectural thought and discourse. The studio finds new possibilities in the climate crisis for architecture that moves away from niche materials and LEED-certified buildings for the 1% to the highly franchised, extra-ordinary, and ubiquitous dollar store. 

1. Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business, “Nearly 1 in 3 new stores opening in the US is a Dollar General,” May 6 2021. Link.

2. Marianne Wilson, Chain Store Age: The Business of Retail, “Dollar store chains opening the most stores so far this year,” Sep 7 2021. Link.

Supported by:
ACSA + Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center
University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Awarded:
2022 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society

Collaborator:
Lindsey Krug

Facilitators:
Franziska Burkard, Natalie Kuehl, Jacob Rohan

Photos by:
Lindsey Krug, Sarah Aziz

MONO-POLY-DOLLAR


Nearly 1 in 3 new stores opening in the US is a Dollar General (DG),1 and, as of September 2021, of the 4,799 announced retail openings, 1,626 are new dollar stores, 1,050 of which are owned and operated by Dollar General Corporation, the country’s largest “small-box” retailer,2 and the largest and most influential of the dollar-store triumvirate: Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar General. The pandemic-fueled downturn in the economy, along with the company’s century-old legacy of innovating its retail model to meet contemporary needs with aggressive expansion, has resulted in an unprecedented proliferation of the dollar-store economy.

In 2023, an interdisciplinary research and design studio and seminar, operating at both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of New Mexico, will use Dollar General Corp.- to examine the country’s environmental, economic, and racial fault lines, and highlight this understudied vernacular typology as a weapon of discourse and agent of climate activism. The course asks students to reimagine the architectural canon, challenge existing value systems, and use the local and familiar as catalysts for change. Through this process, students will test their claims for how small-box architecture has the potential to create new climate regimes.

Working collaboratively across both universities, students will interrogate the DG machine - from its copy-and-paste building design and tactical anti-permitting strategies that enable it to proliferate and undercut its competitors, to the ways it affects large-scale agricultural practices and small-scale domestic realities. They will use their findings to test the social, spatial, and environmental consequences of making a series of small, measured disruptions in the DG system, then compile their speculative proposals into a book and paired exhibition that will be comprehensible to people outside of architecture and the academy. The book will retail in the 18,200+ DG general stores and, therefore, must be legible to a broad audience. The exhibition,Dollar General Futures, will involve designing and producing a panoply of climate-responsive objects for sale in a future DG store.

Small-box dollar stores are critical to the function of our daily lives but are underexplored in architectural thought and discourse. The studio finds new possibilities in the climate crisis for architecture that moves away from niche materials and LEED-certified buildings for the 1% to the highly franchised, extra-ordinary, and ubiquitous dollar store. 

1. Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business, “Nearly 1 in 3 new stores opening in the US is a Dollar General,” May 6 2021. Link.

2. Marianne Wilson, Chain Store Age: The Business of Retail, “Dollar store chains opening the most stores so far this year,” Sep 7 2021. Link.

Supported by:
ACSA + Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center
University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Awarded:
2022 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society

Collaborator:
Lindsey Krug

Facilitators:
Franziska Burkard, Natalie Kuehl, Jacob Rohan

Photos by:
Lindsey Krug, Sarah Aziz