The massive new Whole Foods Market on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena represents the height of one-upmanship in Southern California's increasingly competitive grocery store trade. I'll see your three brands of soy milk, it says cockily to Fresh & Easy, and raise you two.
But the store is even more striking for what it says about the similar discontents plaguing the organic food and green architecture movements. The way they come together in this Whole Foods--a piece of green architecture designed to hold an organic food emporium--suggests that both may need to adjust their priorities. Or at least start acknowledging that they've become victims of their own success.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, April 20, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 46 words Type of Material: Correction
Whole Foods: In the April 6 Los Angeles Times Magazine, the Watch This Space column attributed the architecture of the new Whole Foods Market in Pasadena to KTGY Group. It also should have cited DL English Design Studio in Long Beach, which designed the store's interior.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, May 04, 2008 Home Edition Los Angeles Times Magazine Part I Page 14 Lat Magazine Desk 1 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
Whole Foods: The April 6 Watch This Space column attributed the architecture of the new Whole Foods Market in Pasadena to KTGY Group. It should also have cited the DL English Design Studio in Long Beach, which designed the store's interior.
The trouble begins with the fact that both movements have their roots in the counterculture of the 1960s. Growing your own food was one way for Americans, frustrated by the rising power of agribusiness, to stake a claim for regional culture and individual values. The same was true of early efforts at eco-friendly architecture. The first generation of hay-bale, sod-roof structures represented a do-it-yourself aesthetic in the extreme.
Then, roughly a decade ago, both movements began to take hold in the center of the American consciousness. A few corporations, such as Ford and Bank of America, began building their plants and corporate headquarters in accordance with strict green design principles: using recycled materials, energy-efficient water systems and solar panels to minimize the effects of constructing and operating a new facility. At about the same time, Whole Foods and its competitors began showing up in cities other than Berkeley and Seattle--including places that might have seen the principles of organic food as faddish, or even freakish, a few years earlier.
Somewhere along the way, for both organic grocers and the corporate patrons of green architecture, the line between planet-saving and aggressive marketing became blurred. Companies realized that promoting themselves as eco-friendly could be a powerful sales tool. Some, not surprisingly, concentrated more on the marketing message than on their green practices --a strategy that became known as "greenwashing."
Some, if not most, organic food outlets--including Wild Oats, which Whole Foods acquired last year--suggest that the shopper's goal should be to do more with less. But the genius of the Whole Foods approach, under hard-driving Chief Executive John Mackey, has been to realize that many American consumers have a vague desire to buy organic and live healthier but have no interest in dispensing with selection or comfort.
