ARCHITECTURE in the post-modern consumer society

MAGRIET steynberg

25076436

word COUNT: 2076

Contents

List of Figures...............................................................................................................................................3

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4

Capitalism and Modernity...........................................................................................................................5

Post-Modern Architecture in a consumer society.......................................................................................6

Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9

Source List.................................................................................................................................................10

List of Figures

Figure 1: Wexner Center for the Visual Arts at Ohio State University, 1989, Peter Eisenman....................6Figure 2: In Kochstrasse IBA Housing in Berlin, 1985, Peter Eisenman.......................................................6Figure 3: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2010, Jean Nouvel............................................................................7Figure 4: The CCTV building in Beijing, the headquarters of China Central Television, 2012, Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren.........................................................................................................................7

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Introduction

This essay will address the study of architecture’s position in consumer society. Consumer society is a term describing the outcome of modernisation since the beginning of the 20th century. It is the result of rapid industrial developments, the growth in manufacturing, trade and standardisation, but also the immense pace of diversification and growth of culture, creativity and urbanism as a way of life. I will predominantly look at the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s interpretation of consumer society in terms of Modernity and Post-Modernity. Baudrillard has offered a convincing view about consumer society and the cultural and economic patterns of the present time, as well as deep insights for understanding it. My aim is to better understand the architects’ position in this current culture and what it could mean for the future of architecture.

Capitalism and Modernity

According to Heynen (1999:11) the discussion of modernity is inseparably bound up with this problem of the relation between capitalist civilization and modernist culture. The different positions that have been adopted in this debate have to do with how this relationship is understood. Heyden (1999:11) et al then asks if it a matter of totally independent entities or is there a critical relation between them? Or is it rather a determinist relation, implying that culture cannot but obediently respond to the requirements of capitalist development? She then states that in the case of architecture this question is a very loaded one because architecture operates in both realms. It is unquestionably a cultural activity, but it is one that can be realized only within the world of power and money. In the case of architecture, aesthetic modernity cannot avoid entering into a relationship with the bourgeois modernity of capitalist civilization.

For this essay I am focusing on the transitory views of modernism. Throughout the development of modern art, this moment of ‘transitoriness’ has been emphasized. From the field of art it has been transferred toward a more global conception of modernity, as is made clear by Jean Baudrillard. In La Modemite ou l’esprit du temps(1982:28) he describes modernity as a characteristic mode of civilization that is in opposition to tradition. The desire for innovation and the rebellion against the pressure of tradition are part of the generally accepted ingredients of the modern. However in Baudrillard ‘s view, the desire for innovation and the revolt against tradition are not included in a general drive toward progress, but gradually become autonomous mechanisms. In his account, the transitory aspect therefore has dominance. Baudrillard et al(1982:28) states that modernity is radicalized into momentaneous change, into a continuous traveling, and thus its meaning changes. It gradually loses each substantial value, each ethical and philosophical ideology of progress that sustained it at the outset, and it becomes an aesthetics of change for the sake of change. In the end, modernity purely and simply coincides with fashion, which at the same time means the end of modernity. Thinking through the transitory concept of modernity to its conclusions can lead to the proclamation of the end of modernity and to the postulation of a postmodern condition.

One should not assume that the postmodern condition simply replaces modernity. It rather seems to open up a new and complex layer of meaning of the modern by highlighting its paradoxical aspects. One cannot simply get rid of modernity. It has become so deeply rooted in contemporary societies that it is no longer possible to find a place where its influence does not prevail. This also means that to deny modernity as a uniform whole is a reactionary attitude; not only does it ignore the fact that we are “modern” whether we want to be or not; it also reneges on the promises of emancipation and liberation that are inherent in the modern. At the same time one cannot afford to be blind to the reality that these promises have not been fulfilled.

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In this Post-modern condition I will first be exploring the writings of Jean Baudrillard on the subject. According to “In Simulacra and Simulation” (1994:33), when it comes to postmodern simulation and simulacra, “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real”. Baudrillard is not merely suggesting that postmodern culture is artificial, because the concept of artificiality still requires some sense of reality against which to recognize the artifice. His point, rather, is that we have lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between nature and artifice. To clarify his point, he argues that there are three "orders of simulacra". In the third order of simulacra, which is associated with the postmodern age, we are confronted with a precession of simulacra which states that the representation precedes and determines the real. There is no longer any distinction between reality and its representation, there is only the simulacrum.

Baudrillard points to a number of phenomena to explain this loss of distinctions between "reality" and the simulacrum which I think are all relevant to the discipline of architecture. The first is in our media culture, contemporary media (television, film, magazines, billboards, the Internet) are concerned not just with relaying information or stories but with interpreting our most private selves for us, making us approach each other and the world through the lens of these media images. We therefore no longer acquire goods because of real needs but because of desires that are increasingly defined by commercials and commercialized images, which keep us at one step removed from the reality of our bodies or of the world around us. The second phenomenon is multinational capitalism. As the things we use are increasingly the product of complex industrial processes, we lose touch with the underlying reality of the goods we consume. According to Baudrillard, it is capital that now defines our identities. We thus continue to lose touch with the material fact of the laborer, who is increasingly invisible to a consumer oriented towards retail outlets or the even more impersonal Internet. A common example of this is the fact that most consumers do not know how the products they consume are related to real-life things. Urbanization is the third phenomena. As we continue to develop available geographical locations, we lose touch with any sense of the natural world. Even natural spaces are now understood as “protected,” which is to say that they are defined in contradistinction to an urban “reality,” often with signs to point out just how “real” they are. The final phenomenon is language and ideology. Baudrillard illustrates how in such subtle ways language keeps us from accessing “reality.” Postmodernism understands ideology as the support for our very perception of reality. There is no outside of ideology, according to this view, at least no outside that can be articulated in language. Because we are so reliant on language to structure our perceptions, any representation of reality is always already ideological, always already constructed by simulacra.

Post-Modern Architecture in a consumer society

The study of consumer society should mean a study of predominately seductive and, more generally, other enchanting understandings in explaining the dynamics of society, because

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these are nearer to the consumer lifestyle (Baudrillard 1979:19). According to this view, such terms as enchantment of appearance, image and ambience are more important than individualism, signification, rationalism, naturalism and effectivity in all theories interpreting architecture.

There have not been many contemporary architects who would have consciously thought of their works in terms of the enchantment of appearance. Peter Eisenman is a rare example.

In “Visions’ Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronical Media”, Eisenman says that the first step when making architecture based purely on its appearances is to depict what one knows from what one sees The second step, which suggests certain kinds of “ironical objects”, using Baudrillard’s concept, would be “inscribing the object with the possibility of looking back to the subject”. By using computer programs which randomly fold surfaces, connecting the building and landscape into one continuous whole, Eisenman attempts to create architecture which does not surrender to any particular explanation, but continuously disrupts what is defined as architecture. Eisenman’s idea of architecture idea is that of a surface is relevant in this context. However, the problem with his architecture is that Eisenman’s works are too sterile and pre-conceived to be seductive. Rather, they are merely fascinating. If you think of image in

architecture as a mental representation of appearance, it refers to simulacra, likeness, deception and looks. It is

closely related to the associations the object creates in the mind. When images gain an importance of their own, suggestion begins to win over realism.

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at Ohio State University, 1989, Peter

Figure 2: In Kochstrasse IBA Housing in Berlin, 1985, Peter Eisenman

As with the enchantment of appearance, there are not many architects who have taken image as the starting point in their architecture. Jean Nouvel is one of them. In “Jean Nouvel in Conversation: Tomorrow Can Take Care of Itself”, he says that image is the matter of architecture and thus the future of architecture is not architectural in the tectonic sense. Nouvel emphasises that he is not interested in details but images, and that his architecture is not composed of space but of communicative surfaces, which he calls interfaces.

Tschumi and Koolhaas have also been heading in the right direction if one believes Baudrillard’s interpretation of the dynamics of consumer society. They have based their works on a conscious study of atmosphere rather than functions or meanings in architecture. The famous “congestion” in Koolhaas’ works can be recognised as an atmospheric effect created by “programming”. Koolhaas tries to

create architecture congested with the masses in diverse actions. These actions have typically

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Figure 3: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2010, Jean Nouvel

The CCTV building in Beijing, the headquarters of China Central

not been assigned a specific place. Rational individualism must be abandoned when interpreting mass society.

In Baudrillard’s criticism of the previous theories of consumer society, it is very much a question of the theory of consumer culture elevating to the level where it lets go of communitarian ideals at the mass stage. That is why long-term projects now become extremely difficult to realise in architecture, when there cannot be any constant values. Furthermore, architecture as a mass medium erases the rhetorical use of discourse that has defined intellectuals. The difference between “high” and “low” architecture does not actually disappear, but becomesaleatory and constantly shifting. What does this mean for the future of architecture?

Conclusion

During the last 30 years the purpose of architecture has been redefined. Architecture has abandoned many of its utopian pretentions that we envisioned of through the Modernist movement. Taking into consideration the writings of Baudrillard’s and the meaning of architecture in a post-modern society, I found that Fascinism as a strategy to be pertinent in a consumer society where media culture, multinational capitalism, urbanization and language and ideology has led to no distinction between reality and its representation.

In “The Invisible in Architecture”, according to Bouman and van Toorn, Fascinism denies the dialects between form and content. For this strategy, the surface is the deepest thing there is. The author, as genius and as producer, no longer exists. Representation is reality, in an endless semiosis. We can never stop this process, only succumb to it in fascination. Fascinism treats us to a bombardment of images torn largely from a variety of historical and functional contexts, obscene fragments (1994:20).

The architecture of fascinism is a construction in name only. It is dematerialized on all sides into a communication medium in which it is possible to ‘write’ meanings of every kind. Hence this tendency is post-historical, post-humanistic and post-structuralist, outside dialectic history, beyond Utopia and intertextual. What remains is a universe of signs that may be viewed as a source of immense freedom, or as a shock of simulacra in a pluralism of so many different micro-meanings that every distinction is erased. However you look at it, it is a waste of time seeking anything ‘behind’ anything else, and certainly seeking truth behind form.

Fascinists take into account a whole complex of social, cultural and technological factors, they aim at an architecture that is up to date. Everything must be represented in this architecture. This architecture of the superego as a hypersensitive stays on top. The here and now of current reality is always one step ahead. Anyone who wishes to disobey is suffering from hope for the past or yearning for the future. Hence fascinism is free of nostalgia, but by no means free of other impositions. Mandatory submission to the ‘course of things’, to a historical/futurological Zeitgeist, is a present-day alternative to the seductions of totalitarianism. Hence this strategy is vulnerable to the same criticism as has been applied to cultural relativism. It offers no moral

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criterion to help us chart a course into the future. At the same time, the fascinist refuses to recognize the ethical choice implicit in this observation. Nothing is true, not even that. Everything is relative except for that. Fascinism appeals to the extensions of the cortex, to the eye of the television, to the binary brain of the computer, to artificial intelligence. Fascinist architecture is a excitedly progressive architecture, aimed at an impassioned mood for ‘homo cyberneticus’.

Source List

1. HILDE HEYNEN, 2000, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 8-24

2. JEAN BAUDRILLARD, 1994. The precession of simulacra, In Simulacra and Simulation, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1-42.

3. JEAN BAUDRILLARD, 1982, Modernité,” in La modernité ou l’esprit du temps, Biennale de Paris, Section Architecture, Paris, L’Equerre, 27-28.

4. PETER EISENMAN, 1994, Visions’ Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronical Media, Michigan, A+U Publishers, 2-5.

5. JEAN NOUVEL, 1993, Jean Nouvel in Conversation: Tomorrow Can Take Care of Itself, AD, Visions for the Future, 37.

6. REM KOOLHAAS & SANFORD KWINTER, 1996, Conversations with Students, New York, Princeton Architect ural Press, p 5-6.

7. OLE BOUMAN & ROEMER VAN TOORN, 1994, The Invisible in Architecture, New York, St. Martin's Press, 20.

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