Twenty-five to Life
[architecture beyond the image]
If ornament was a crime of modernity, then imagery is surely a crime of the contemporary. The "fetishization" of the image has played a preeminent role within the contemporary architectural landscape and, as this escalates without cultural critique, will result in a built environment littered with seductive imagery and empty, content-less forms.
In an attempt to understand this topic further, this essay will look to six influential individuals as a means for finding some semblance of order amidst chaos. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard, architect and theorist Neil Leach, Doctor William S. Saunders, philosopher Guy Debord, architect Peter Zumthor, and architectural professor and theorist Michael Benedikt. While each are dealing with issues of the image within contemporary culture, they have chosen unique mediums to express their response. Zumthor and Benedikt approach the topic from an almost purely architectural point of view as they search the built environment for beauty, truth, and honesty. Leach and Saunders are caught in-between the discourse of contemporary architecture and theory, investigating an architecture that rejects aesthetic obsession and focuses instead on a heightened awareness of society. Baudrillard and Debord are firmly rooted in theory and philosophy of contemporary culture pertaining to the stimulation and subsequent over-stimulation of the human consciousness. Whether the argument is based in the social realm or architectural realm, all agree that imagery has found itself the centerpiece of debate in relation to the demise of contemporary culture.
Over the past thirty to forty years, some will argue even earlier, society became consumed by consumerism. What grew out of capitalist entrepreneurial spirit turned into a pure infatuation for things. The new, the high-tech, the rare, the biggest, the best; people began to judge other people based on material possessions. While good for business, it has bred a culture of superficial beings whose perception of the world is based solely on appearance. According to Jean Baudrillard this phenomenon began through the mainstream promotion of media, monetary exchange values, multinational capitalism, urbanization, and the obscuring of language. Essentially, reality was masked by these “simulacra” and social constructs, and society was thrust deep into an age of simulation. “…Simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘ real’ and the ‘imaginary’.” {{Baudrillard}} Parallel to this argument lie Guy Debord and William S. Saunders, both of whom have identified the similar phenomena within economics, as the root of societal superficiality. “Society has created an inverted image of itself and is exhibited outwardly as a spectacle.” {{Debord}} Ultimately, it is global capitalism and popular media that has hijacked contemporary culture and muddied the collective conscious of society. Thus we are left directionless within an environment in constant flux. {{Saunders}}
The lack of critique from within contemporary culture has led to an over-saturation of the image, which, in turn, has desensitized societal awareness toward the pertinent social and political issues of our time. {{Leach}} Fetishized imagery has replaced the human social life with mere representations. {{Debord}} On a daily basis the population is flooded with sensory stimulants to the point of over-stimulation. Thus the senses become desensitized, which ultimately cause an attitude of indifference (“blasé”) toward the deeper understanding of the surrounding environment. {{Baudrillard}} It is when this indifference develops that society’s focus shifts from the collective to the individual, and the meaning of things is rendered meaningless. {{Baudrillard}} Symbols, signs and the simulation of the human experience have replaced the importance of understanding reality. {{Baudrillard} “(This) notion of reality has escaped discourse within contemporary culture. The effects of consumer reproductions have led to an accepted “fakeness” within society, where hyperreal meanings are applied to everything. The individual can no longer discern truth from lie, reality from hyperreality. {{Benedikt}}
To proceed within the realm of contemporary architecture, one must recognize that it has attempted to adapt to the cultural issue of desensitization. Unfortunately, the overwhelming response has been focused on the use of seductive architectural imagery, which only further intoxicates society and debilitates awareness. {{Leach}} The widespread, and accepted, use of seduction enables aesthetic appeal to champion all other aspects of the architectural profession, which inevitably forces architecture into the realm of art. Nevertheless, the overarching issue is that form has become more important than the content within, and in order to survive, you have to sell. For an architect, that means conforming to the demands of popular culture. If at this point one is in search of examples, look no further than the “use of spectacular buildings to brand cities and institutions, and the dizzying transformations of the skylines of Shanghai and Dubai…” {{Saunders}} The technique of branding has become popularized in an attempt to locate architectural legitimacy within a society so focused on the image and its associated experience. “As competition in the building industry accelerated due to improved methods of mass production, architecture became more and more reliant on the production of signs and images. For architecture to succeed in a consumer market, it had to cater to the diverse tastes and demands of a post-modern society.” {{Brandscapes}} However, if we hold that statement to be true, it implies that aesthetics must prevail at all cost, but by focusing purely on the heightening of the visual sense, the architect(ure) irresponsibly disregards the remaining faculties of the human body. {{Saunders}} This predominance of imagery over human experience is undoubtedly a result of the architects’ desire for popularity and success within the profession; however, it inherently comes with the risk of alienating the significance of the built environment upon society.
The architectural profession is currently undergoing an identity crisis that revolves around the effects of digital technology on design, the pervasive impact of global capitalism, and whether to embrace or resist popular media and taste. {{Saunders}} In order to decipher a potential direction for evolution, one must identify what architecture truly encompasses. “The essence of architecture is rooted in reality.” {{Benedikt}} “Architecture is the connection to life; the backdrop and the stage.” {{Zumthor}} The evolution of the architectural profession needs to return to reality and focus upon human need and experience. {{Zumthor}} Contemporary architects should inform their designs with “the direct esthetic experience of the real” as a means for stepping out of the shadow casted by the superficial obsession with imagery. {{Benedikt}} “The strength of a good design lies within ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent.” {{Zumthor}} While Zumthor argues for his personal approach to the process that is architecture, it is Benedikt who begins to define a more universal approach. The four components of realness: presence, significance, materiality and emptiness, with which architecture can move beyond the superficial making of form and space, and into reality. {{Benedikt}}
Many will view this essay as a generalized attack upon the profession, and in some regards that is a valid perspective, but the intention is not to purely further an already well-established critique. It is instead to enforce the notion of a perceived need for redirecting and refocusing the architectural reaction toward the image. Architecture is intended for the public realm; it has a specific place within that realm, one that needs to be fully experienced through the architectural intervention. For it is when the built environment is capable of having an impact upon the everyday user that architecture is at its realist and most beautiful…regardless of image.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leach, Neil. The Anaesthetics of Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture 2d ed. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006.
Saunders, William S. The New Architectural Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation (English translation). Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Benedikt, Michael. For an Architecture of Reality. New Mexico: Lumen Books, 1988.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle (English translation). New York: Zone Books, 1994.
