The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment by Jesse LeCavalier
University of Minnesota Press, 2016
Paperback, 282 pages

Think about Walmart and most likely architecture does not spring to mind. The company Sam Walton started in Arkansas in the 1960s became the world's largest retailer by erecting inexpensive and efficient boxes to store and display good sold cheaper than anybody else, not by championing attention-getting architecture. Nevertheless, their Walmart stores, Supercenters, and Sam's Clubs are instantly recognizable, and their interiors incorporate research on the benefits of natural light and other environmental factors toward getting customers to open up their pocketbooks. In other words, Walmart is well aware of the importance of architecture; it's just executed in a manner quite distinct from capital-A architecture.
One aspect of Walmart's physical reality is logistics, which appears to have been a passion of designer and educator Jesse LeCavalier for some time now. I first became aware of his research in 2010 when I posted "Walhattan" and a link to his essay, "All Those Numbers," at Places Journal. A couple years later I came across his ongoing research in Cabinet Issue 47: Logistics, where his piece, "The Restlessness of Objects," appeared. He got a fair amount of attention back then in part from a graphic showing the square footage of the various Walmart iterations next ...