I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.
Even a dwelling is a device that generates a distinct pattern of daily activities and their relationships. Some buildings are explicitly built for ritual, but the repetition of any activity, either mundane or religious, tends to ritualize them, and by facilitating this, an architectural structure can turn gradually – sometimes even unnoticeably – into an instrument of ritual.
The association of comfort with people and place are reinforced by the ritualized use of a place. Using a place at a set time and in a specific manner creates a constancy as dependable as the place itself. It establishes, in time and behavior, a definition of place as strong as any architectural spatial definition, such as an aedicula, might be. Ritualized use can do more than reinforce the affection for a place. Through ritual, a place becomes an essential element in the customs of a people.
At the end of the presentation someone asked whether he thought they should do some market research to see what customers wanted. "No," he replied, "because customers don't know what they want until we've shown them." Then he pulled out a device that was about the size of a desk diary. "Do you want to see something neat?" When he flipped it open, it turned out to be a mock-up of a computer that could fit in your lap, with a keyboard and a screen hinged together like a notebook. "This is my dream of what we will be making in the mid- to late eighties," he said. They were building a company that would invent the future.