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I spent 11 hours in Dubai Mall.

Despite spending half a day there, I saw and bought from only a fraction of the 1,200 retail outlets. My time was consumed by other experiences. I rode the high-speed lifts to the viewing deck of Burj Khalifa, gawked at marine life through an enormous picture window and marvelled at the astounding Dubai Fountain. It felt like a vacation within a vacation.

The marketing people got me where they want me. The point of an experience-based mall is to employ "WOW!" distractions to increase the Opportunity-To-See or OTS factor and hence opportunity to spend. I was there with thousands enraptured by the distractions and serendipitous opportunities. The rich and the poor were there albeit in different sections which retail designers have taken pains to segregate subtly with architecture through scale, lighting, materials and points-of-access. Bloomingdales has its own entrance for high-net worth folks to swan in away from the hoi polloi.

I left Dubai Mall close to midnight with a vivid angst about the Hackett shirt I didn't buy and the inkling of a subtext beneath the smoke, mirrors and emblems of conspicuous consumption. I remember a woman who while riding the escalator in the luxury section unhinged her not-Chanel-bag-but-with-Chanel-quilt from her shoulder to turn the front inwards so that the plebeian brand was less noticeable. There is a dark side to mall fantasy.

We see the emblems coveted everywhere—Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, Hermes, Dior, Bulgari—brands are shorthand in the contest for status and one-upmanship, a game that we seem to propel ourselves towards because of some in-built neural circuitry.

Geoffrey Miller in his books Spent and The Mating Mind theorises that the instinct for conspicuous display is rooted in the biological need innate in all creatures to advertise fitness to mate via desirable physical traits. An iconic example would be the tail of a peacock evolved to advertise reproductive fitness to peahens. Humans on the other hand can indicate fitness through both physical and cognitive traits. The former is where brands go hand-in-glove with biological adaptation.

Conspicuous spending for social signalling, the most visible form in our rampant culture of consumption, is just the tip of the iceberg. Conspicuous or not, it's hard to understand manic consumption within a biological tendency without crossing over an ethical or moral chasm. The phenomenal wastage that is generated by built-in obsolescence and the throwaway culture that we take for granted is troubling.

But is our predisposition to display that inextricably hardwired into our heads?

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Vincent is the principal of Visual Text Architects. He was most recently selected for the URA's "20 Under 45: The Next Generation" exhibition. In 2007, he won an Honorary Mention in the S3: Steel. Space. Structure competition and in 2002, was awarded Silver in the SIAICI Colour Awards in 2002. As a stage designer, Vincent was nominated for Best Set Design in the 2008 Life! Theatre Awards. He graduated from National University of Singapore (1994) with the Singapore Institute of Architects Medal and Board of Architects Prize. He was awarded a Certificate of Commendable Performance in the 1999 Professional Practice Examinations. Vincent has written extensively for design magazines since 1994, is the author of "Creating Paradise: T3 Singapore Changi Airport" and was editor of two issues of Singapore Architect. He has also taught at NUS and has conducted studios and final reviews at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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