An approach to the assessment of environmental impact in retail architecture

Abstract

Architecture has been an essential resouce in retail to keep products in suitable technical conditions, provide confort to costumers during the purchase process, and set up a communication bond across the attraction process moves to trigger the purchase. The addition of more architecture in commercialization of products (stores, supply chains, etc.) has been an inherent fact to historical retail development in intensity and extent. However, a glance of the whole retail system in any city provide the verification of coexistence and development of many architectural typologies used for retailing, formed with dissimilar ammounts of resources (energy, material, information, technology), that entail different environmental impacts.