The Green Giant

The Whole Foods regional flagship in Pasadena, designed by the KTGY Group in Santa Monica, is an architectural monument to this idea. Along with the Ecolution hemp shopping bags for $7.49 and the "Certified Organic" cotton candy near the checkout aisle, the store has a salsa bar, a coffee bar, a nut bar, a noodle bar, a tapas bar with 20 wines by the glass, a soup bar, a pudding bar and a charcuterie. And a chocolate fountain. There is a sign promising "custom butters," the first time I have seen that word in the plural.

On the Sunday I visited, a group was settling down in the center of the second floor, just behind the pizza oven and not far from the roast-beef carving station, for a full-blown Champagne brunch. TVs hang everywhere so you can watch PGA golf (that's what was on when I was there) while you pick out fair-trade roses from Ecuador.

It's Vegas with organic, gluten-free scones.

On the second floor, near the elevator, there's a large sign--marked "Green Mission"--describing all the store's sustainable materials. They include Neapolitan bamboo ("a highly renewable resource") and Fireclay tile ("made from 50% post-consumer and post-industrial waste"), among others.

"We source materials that rapidly replenish themselves and do not contribute to biodiversity loss," the sign reads. "We support growers of forest and other sustainable products that are responsibly managed."

But the first rule of sustainable architecture is to keep new buildings as small and efficient as possible. With its soaring 30-foot ceilings and endless aisles, 280 subterranean parking spots and all those TVs flickering day and night, this place is neither. It's more like the grocery store version of a hybrid SUV made by Lexus or a 12,000-square-foot "green" house with a swimming pool and six-car garage accompanying its solar panels and sustainably harvested decking.

As food writer Michael Pollan has pointed out, there is a paradox at the heart of Mackey's plan for Whole Foods, which is that to be sustainable the company must keep topping itself. The stores will have to keep getting bigger and more impressive, their revenue growing, new corners of the country conquered--all in the name of reducing resource consumption, supporting small farmers and bringing the planet back into balance. Mackey responded last year to complaints along those lines with a pledge to change some of the company's ways--to buy more fruits and vegetables from local producers, for example, and to pay more attention to how its meat suppliers treat their animals.

But the architecture of the Pasadena store suggests that the fundamental approach hasn't changed. Forget about doing more with less. This green-tinged cornucopia is all about doing more with more.