Iconic Architecture and Capitalist Globalization
on. 1572. 1. An image, figure, or representation; a portrait; an illustration in book; image in the solid; a statue. 2. Eastern Church. A representation of some sacred personage, itself regarded as sacred, and honoured with a relative worship. Adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary, various editions.
In being described as an icon: “I think it’s just another word for a washed-up snowlees.” (Bob Dylan, 1998, cited in Snowles, 1999)
Iconic. An incitement to spend money.” (Monon, 2004)
This paper aims to develop a framework within which the place of iconic architecture in capitalistization can be analysed. The literature globalization is enormous, and are many competing approaches for primacy.
central feature of all the approaches toization current in the social sciences is some important contemporary problems be adequately studied at the level of what is, in terms of national societies or national relations, but need to be theorized terms of globalizing processes, at the level of the state. Many architects statistics have joined the debate aboutization (e.g. Ibelings, 1998; Migayrou Rayer, 2003). It is clear that the idea concept of globalization, a concept many meanings, would benefit from a mode of deconstruction. Let us begin by going into three separate ideas, namely globalization, capitalist globalization and alternative globalizations.
Globalization
Aa of generic globalization focuses our attention on four new phenomena that have significant since the middle of the century:
- Electronic revolution, notably transformations in the technological base and a scope of the electronic mass media, most of the material infrastructure (German and McChesney, 1997; Castells, 2000);
- Postcolonial revolution, whereby most as soon as they were conceptualized as such in the 1950s, the First and the Second Worlds began to be deconstructed;
- Subsequent creation of transnational spaces;
- Citatively new forms of cosmopolitanism.
Of these characteristics of genericization is significant for contemporary structure. Tombesi (2001) shows how newologies, particularly computer software, are a new international division works in China. Many celebrated living architects readily accept that they could not have made their most famous designs without the help of computer-aided design (CAD), notably Norman Foster’s Reichstag in Berlin, Great Court in the British Museum (Pawley, 1999) and the Swiss Re Building in London, and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (Friedman, 1999). Swiss Re and the Disney Concert Hall are often cited as prime examples of how iconic buildings have transformed city skylines (see Figures 1 and 2).
The postcolonial has had profound effects on architecture, urbanism and identity all over the world, notably illustrated by King (2004) in his powerful arguments around “spaces of global culture”. Architects are also responsible for the creation of many transnational social spaces, spaces like globally branded shopping malls, theme parks, waterfront developments and transportation centres that could literally be almost anywhere in the world and thus must have consequences for the senses of space of those who use them. New forms of cosmopolitanism are more difficult to pin down, but the most famous architects, dubbed “starchitects”, of today play an increasingly pivotal role in creating them.
These new phenomena—the electronic and postcolonial revolutions, transnational social spaces, new forms of cosmopolitanism—are the defining characteristics of globalization in a generic sense. They are irreversible in the long run (absent global catastrophe) because for the vast majority of the people in the world, rich or poor, men or women, black or white, young or old, able or disabled, educated or uneducated, gay or straight, secular or religious, generic globalization could serve their own best interests, even if it is not necessarily serving their best interests at present. Globalization impacts most people, big landlords as well as subsistence farmers in the new world.
1 Foster's Swiss Re Building (2003)—a new icon in the London skyline. Source: Leslie Sklair.
as well as desperate migrants in transnational hope of better lives. These polarities to the inescapable fact that we do not a world of abstract generic globalization at a world of actually existing capitalistization. So, the dominant global system start of the 21st century is the capitalist system.
system theory
System theory is based on the concept of international practices, practices that cross boundaries but do not originate with agencies or actors (although they are involved). This conceptual choice offers a working hypothesis for one of the often contested disagreements between organization theorists and their opponents, the extent to which the powers of the state in decline. The concept of transnational practices is an attempt to make more the issues raised by such questions in debate over globalization. "Transnaacknowledges that states still exist and real states still have power but that the power in the global system has been ing decisively in favour of non-state national (thus globalizing) forces since 50s. Analytically, transnational practice in three spheres, the economic, political and the cultural-ideological. Thesis what I mean by the "global system". Global system at the beginning of the 21st is not synonymous with globalism, but the dominant forces of globalism are the dominant forces in the system.
Individuals, groups, institutions and even communities, local, national or transnational, can exist, perhaps even thrive as we always done outside the orbit of the capitalist system but this is becoming singly more difficult as capitalist globalization and more widely and transnational practices, a still-evolving transnational capitalist class in the political sphere, and in the culture-ideology sphere, the culture-ideology of consumerism. The importance of the transnational corporations and of consumerism are now widely recognized by proponents, opponents and those who claim to be neutral about globalization, but the idea of the transnational capitalist class is less familiar and much more controversial.
It is important at the outset to state that the members of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) are typically people who have globalizing perspectives as well as rather than in opposition to localizing perspectives (Sklair, 2001). These are people from many parts of the world who operate transnationally as a normal part of their working lives but who more often than not have more than one place that they can call home. This reflects their relationships to transnational social spaces and the new forms of cosmopolitanism of generic globalization, forms that encourage both local rootedness and transnational (globalizing) vision. Clearly, new modes of rapid and comfortable long-distance transportation and electronic communications make this possible in an historically unprecedented fashion. It is for this reason that the new concept of globalization is most appropriately reserved for the new economic, technological and social conditions that began to develop in the middle of the 20th century and have rapidly accelerated since then. The TCC can be conceptualized in terms of the following four fractions (based on primary institutional locus, though actual people may operate in more than one fraction).
1 Those who own and/or control the major transnational corporations and their local affiliates (corporate fraction)
ally overlapping, types: first, the list of these firms, and second, the most cited and famous architectural firms. Magazine World Architecture has added annual lists of the top corporations industry by fee income and numbers of opening architects employed (available on its website). In 2004 the biggest firms around $200–300 million in fees and employed around 1000 or fewer offices so, in comparison with the major corporations they are quite small (to entry to the Fortune Global 500 these you need revenues of $10 billion plus). Relatively few of the top 50 architectural firms are led by famous architects or famous buildings. The actual importance of celebrated architects for the built environment and their cultural importance, partly in cities, far outweighs their rela- tion of financial and corporate muscle Sklar, 2005, tables 1–3 for data).
Realizing politicians and bureaucrats (traction)
Are the politicians and bureaucrats at the ends of administrative power and respon- sibility, in communities, cities, states, and national and global institutions who are interests of capitalist globalization as or in opposition to those who elect point them. They decide what gets built and how changes to the built environ- are regulated. They are particularly want for issues of preservation and planning (Tung, 2001), and in compet- for major projects, many of which in the creation of what are known as structural icons (Haan and Haagsma, Lipsdtadt, 1989).
Realizing professionals (technical)
In the structural features of new building to those responsible for the education of students and the public in architecture who are allied, through choice or circumstance, with globalizing corporations and the agenda of capitalist globalization.
4 Merchants and media (consumerist fraction)
These are the people who are responsible for the marketing of architecture in all its manifestations and whose main task is to connect the architecture industry with the culture-ideology of consumerism.
The point of this discussion of the TCC is to suggest that the symbolism and aesthetics of iconic buildings and spaces needs to be contextualized in terms of the specific connections between the four fractions of the TCC and the production and representation of iconic architecture (see Sklar, 2005). How, then, does the iconic operate within capitalist globalization?
The icon: history and theory of an idea
What does it mean to say that a building or a space or an architect is “iconic”? The term is in common usage for those in and around architecture with a considerable overlap into the mass media. The idea has two defining characteristics. First, it clearly means famous, at least for some constituencies; and second, a judgement of iconicity is also a symbolic/aesthetic judgement. By this I mean that an architectural icon is imbued with a special meaning that is symbolic for a culture and/or a time, and that this special meaning has an aesthetic component. It is this unique combination of fame with symbolism and aesthetic quality that creates the icon. Iconicity persists, but not necessarily forever. These characteristics constitute my working definition for the purpose of this discussion.
it is necessary to sketch out the
outline of the idea and show how it fits into
history and practice of capitalist global
first dispose of an important epistem-
ical question. There are some who
that contemporary life, and by implica-
architectural iconicity, is entirely a
of image, an essential component of
modern turn in cultural theory and
the importance of drawings and
graphy in establishing the iconic status
buildings or spaces is widely assumed
rather less widely discussed in
temporary architecture (see, e.g., Ratten-
002). While in no way minimizing the
city of the image in the production and
inion of iconics, neglecting what
is an image of is to misunderstand this
city entirely. The best analogy is with
using. The images of advertising may
symbolic qualities whether or not they
people to buy the products they
ant, but from the point of view of those
active capitalist globalization the point
artising is to sell products. If "symbol-
for example figurative or cubist or
or abstract expressionist images,
sell the product that is fine, but the
serves the circuit of capital and with
ceptions has little independent exist-
side this circuit. It certainly does not
be or replace the circuit of capital.
only, the point of the images of iconic
culture is to persuade people to buy
in the sense of consume and in the
of give credence to) the buildings and
and lifestyles and, in some cases, the
thems they represent. Thus, while the
of iconic architecture can be great art,
are not the things they are images of.
city is not simply a question of image
implication, fashion. Iconicity works
exists because the buildings in which it
are built by architects and teams of
nature and scale of the fame of icons and
what they symbolize has been transformed
by corporate interests in a historically
unprecedented way.
The relation between image and reality
may be complex. Many architects report
that the images they had seen of iconic
buildings and spaces had totally unprepared
them for the emotional (in some cases the
spiritual) experience of actually seeing and
being in a building and its spaces. A notable
example is Ronchamp—the full name of this
church by Le Corbusier is the Pilgrimage
Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at
Ronchamp—a frequent object of architectural pilgrimages and even pastiche in the
form of a branch of the Bank of America in
Palm Springs, California (see Figure 3).
And this can work in the opposite direction
where actual experiences of buildings and
spaces do not match their iconic images.
This issue will be discussed below in the
context of the different modes of architectural iconicity.
As the citations from the Oxford English Dictionary at the top of this paper make clear, an icon originally meant a representation—an image, figure, portrait, illustration, or in the solid, a statue. The Eastern Church turned it into a representation of some sacred personage, an object of veneration, itself regarded as sacred. Iconic in the history of art was applied to the ancient portrait statues of victorious athletes, and hence to memorial statues and busts (so the labelling of sports celebrities as icons does have classical origins). Iconography and iconology became branches of knowledge dealing with representative art. So the history of the icon is bound up with representation, symbolism and expression. Gombrich (1972, p. 124) explains: "These three ordinary functions of images may be present in one concrete image—a motif in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch may represent a broken vessel, modelize the size of clutter and vulture."
3 "Ronchamp" Palm Springs, ironic reference to iconic Ronchamp in an architecturally aware "modernist" city insert. Source: Leslie Sklair.
icon as representation (let us call this I) does have some pedigree in architectural theory. Broadbent (1973), for examiningsuches four approaches to design, the pragmatic (using available material and methods), iconic (copying and modifying pragmatic solutions), local (use of rules) and analogical (using ties from other fields or contexts). This meaning of iconic (not very different from his canonic) is still current in some architecture schools is clear from an interest-net debate in 2003 around the topic. Iconic design in architecture is defined following terms: "a culture has a fixed of what an object should be like and ... recent generations of that culture keep adding that object in the same way and the same shape." (www.sklair.org) architecture and the responses reflect this. One respondent identified the icon as a stereotype, as when the word "mosque" brings up the image of the dome and the minar and all domes and minars look more or less alike (Iconic I). Similarly, the respondent continues, architecture itself could provide an icon for a culture as the Statue of Liberty has become for the USA, Sydney Opera House for Australia, and Mies' Barcelona Pavilion, used as an icon for the new post-war Germany. This point stimulated lively debate. There are two issues here. First, it is obvious that if an icon is a type then it cannot also be something unique as in the three examples cited. It is clear that within architecture the icon can refer to the ordinary, fixed and constantly repeated. This is also more the case in which Palm Sklair.
the original meaning, albeit cynical of the iconic “Palladian villa” or even office block that is simply a form of some archetype of the villa or cathedral or office block, because it is like what it is supposed to be (see 4).
Never, iconic is more often used today entirely opposite sense. For example, Will Alsop (an architect who has had TV programmes in Britain) won therous competition to design the £225 (ca $400 million) Fourth Grace in Liverpool, his scheme was voted it popular of a star-studded shortlist in of 15,000 Liverpudians, well behind & Partners and Richard Rogers. Her, a spokesman for Alsop Architects entitled: “if you propose any icon the response is negative because it chalperception: it is the nature of an icon. Of the other schemes were icons. They endmarks”. David Dunster, Liverpool city’s head of architecture, supported Alsop, saying that most of the other proposals “were simply repeating things we had seen before and were trying to pass them off on Liverpool”.15 This repetitive representational sense recalls the more mundane, even if loved, landmark, the way in which Lynch (1960) appears to use it. So for Alsop and his supporters, the iconic means a building or a space (and perhaps even an architect) that is different and unique, intended to be famous and to have special symbolic/aesthetic qualities. Let us call this Iconic II, with the added feature that such icons can be proclaimed iconic before they are built.
All works of art are routinely said to represent, symbolize or express things or feelings. This is relatively understandable in terms of the visual arts, or even music or dance, in the way that a painting or a sculpture or a symphony or a ballet can represent, symbolize or express a landscape or a family group or, more abstractly, longing or love. But how can a building or a space be said to represent, symbolize or express anything?
by, some buildings actually do look like
s. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim
m in New York is commonly said to
ent the spiral form in nature (see
5), Jorn Utzon’s Sydney Opera
at the sails of a boat (or the segments of
range), Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in
fish scales, Norman Foster’s Swiss Re
in London (see Figure 1) is one of the
ovalic representations in a long line of
buildings, and so on. This is because, in
sense, all these buildings actually do
like real or stylized versions of what
are said to look like. In Learning from
Vegas Robert Venturi et al. (1977, part
imously divided all buildings into
s” and “decorated sheds”. Ducks, after
in on Long Island in the shape of a
are a kind of “building-becoming-
ure” where all the architectural systems
submerged and distorted by an overall
symbolic form"; decorated sheds are build-
ings where “systems of space and structure
are directly at the service of the program [the
functions that the building is intended to
perform] and ornament is applied inde-
pendently of them” (1997, p. 87). The example
given for the duck is Chartres cathedral
(though, confusingly, Chartres is also said to
be a decorated shed) and for the decorated
shed, Palazzo Farnese in Rome.
It is easy to dismiss this distinction as a
piece of whimsy in a book (perish the
thought) on the architectural qualities of Las
Vegas, but there are two good reasons to take
it seriously, even if the original authors may
no longer do so. First, the work of Robert
Venturi and Denise Scott Brown has been
very influential on the thinking of those in
and around architecture, and not only so-
called postmodernists, who fight for the
contextualization of buildings, spaces and
acts themselves, against the high art
real view of architecture. And second,
distinction does have some significance
argument about iconicity and capital-
alization. While duck and decorated
the unpromising labels for a discussion
of architecture, the examples given are
significant. Most people who read
"Gring from Las Vegas" would have heard
attracts cathedral, certainly an icon of the
picture of the middle ages and a building
derived by architects and tourists from all
the world. The Palazzo Farnese, less well
outside Europe, is celebrated in archi-
tic history as one of the great monumen-
ces of the High Renaissance in Rome.
Its original architect, Sangallo the
er, is not well known, after his death
including Michelangelo helped to
reate the palace. So, both these examples
great buildings" in the commonly
and architectural sense and it is the
places between ducks and decorated
not the frivolous labels, we need to
on. The main difference is symbolism.
"et al." (1997, p. 87) argue: "The duck
special building that is a symbol; the
shed is the conventional shelter
applies symbols". They illustrate the
with (1) a picture of the famous "Long
Duckling" and a sketch of the buildi-
ne words "Duck" and "Highway" and
car from which, presumably the duck
seen; and (2) a picture of a typical road
in the USA (now typical all round the
of gas stations and large signs advertis-
ir products, and a sketch with the
"Decorated Shed" plus one little shed
large "Eat" sign outside plus another
with "Eat" emblazoned on the exterior.
Go on to illustrate the distinction in
more detail by contrasting two
temporary buildings, both designed to
the elderly, namely Crawford Manor
Haven (1962–1966) by Paul Rudolph
the proprietors of the Department of
manner, Venturi et al. contrast the "heroic
and original" qualities of Crawford Manor
with the "ugly and ordinary" qualities of Guild House, concluding that what is needed
is more of the latter (architecture of meaning,
symbolism, representational, societal
messages, etc.) and less of the former (archi-
ture of expression, abstraction, and
abstract expressionism, architectural content,
etc.).
The duck–decorated shed distinction
suggests ways of seeing why a few buildings,
at least, become iconic under different social
systems while the vast majority of buildings
do not, as well as suggesting different types
of iconicity. If all buildings are both ducks
and decorated sheds we can argue that
iconicity may be a way of celebrating the
"duckness" of special buildings through
what they are agreed to symbolize or express.
Gombrich (1972, p. 21) argues: "Iconology
must start with a study of institutions rather
than with a study of symbols", and though
his field of scholarly interest is Renaissance
art, his conviction is just as relevant for
contemporary iconic architecture. Whereas
Iconic I icons, like landmarks, do not neces-
sarily raise questions about symbolism and
expression, Iconic II icons do and it is
precisely in the ways in which they do that
we can find the different, special and unique
qualities of Iconic II buildings, spaces and
architects. To find these qualities we must,
as Gombrich suggests, start with a study of
institutions rather than with a study of
symbols, in this case with the institutions
of capitalist globalization.
So, there is clearly a good deal of ambiguity if not confusion about the use of iconic in
and around architecture. From now on, I
want to file away the representational,
mimetic meaning (Iconic I) and restrict the
term to what is its much more common use
in discussions of architecture today, reference
to the symbolism and expression of
difference the special and the unique rei
public significance, it is the institutional features that dominate the times and places audiences of buildings, spaces and architecture that makes them famous, and that are the explanations for their iconicity symbolic/aesthetic qualities on their cannot furnish. However, under conditions of capitalist globalization unless these are acceptable to the transnationalist class, it is unlikely—though not invisible—that large-scale architectural should be built, given the financial risks involved.
Only full-length contemporary treatises of icons available appears to be that accompanied an exhibition at the Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art (1996, Icons as Magnets of Meaning). It uses the following characteristics to provoke the “wow” home, cool and hot; (2) they have to create as much noise as communicated; (3) there is nothing intrinsic about an object it looks and feels are what matter; they are formed as much by the frame, culture, presentation) as the content; they embody human factors or emotive qualities; (6) they are fluid, they cannot articulate parts; (7) they are smooth and defined because they are mass-produced; for architectural icons (8) they have a monumentality; (9) they are sensuously light, they project translucency as used to modernist transparency; (10) embody perfection; (11) and a sense of beauty, enigmatic character, that replaces words or signs, and are generally silent, using a hypnotic quality in their sense of stress (Betsky, 1997, pp. 20-51). Items (7) focus on consumer goods, the rest may address architectural icons in terms of monumentality, translucency, perfection (let us say) enigma plus. These are odd in interesting choices. It is true that perhaps most of the buildings only need to have iconic status.
The case of the iconic architect further complicates the issue. Where an architect becomes iconic for a particular building and then makes more buildings that resemble the original icon, this may well be considered repetitive in the representation sense, and so the conferring of iconic status on the subsequent buildings may also confuse Iconic I and Iconic II. Indeed, such circumstances have been taken to be grounds for rejecting the value of iconicity itself and call into question the merits of what have come to be labelled signature architects (namely architects whose unique signatures, in the sense of recognizable features, are on their buildings). The principals of Foreign Office Architects, a booming young London-based transnational architectural practice (the principals Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo are from Iran and Spain, respectively), have claimed that with “iconic architecture” now cropping up in every city these buildings are starting to cancel each other out: “Gehry is peppering the world with Bilbao Guggenheim lookalikes and if you’ve seen one building by Calatrava or Meier, you’ve seen them all” (quoted in The Guardian, 17 November 2003). This discursive strategy of applying the law of diminishing returns to iconic architects begs the question of what it means to say that an architect is iconic. Certainly a select group of architects throughout history have been described in this way. But the problem is to explain why, when iconicity is ascribed to one or two buildings of some architects, insignificant to regard to all their build-
for his early and at the time not much in buildings, including those that exist on paper. As the blurb on a recent book “This volume explores an unbuilt yet project by Le Corbusier [the Venice Biennale]” (Sarkis, 2001). Fayolle-Lussac at OCOMOMO Paris Conference in raises the issue of the “overprotection work of Le Corbusier” with respect to using estate at Pessac and other sites, that the publicity surrounding the trial of Corbu’s birth had averse” effect of raising their status. Lady by Boudon (1972) on what the Le Corbusier and the inhabitants of thought about their housing estateantamount to asking if Shakespeare could have written a bad play or sonnet, or Beethoven a bad symphony, and so on). In terms of the history of architecture, theorists and historians alike have to make aesthetic judgements and they do.21 These and other great architects have designed dozens and sometimes hundreds of buildings, and not all of them can be discussed in even the biggest book. It is notable that by and large the same few works of the masters are chosen time and again for textbooks and histories. It would be odd, for example, to discuss Wright without Fallingwater, Corbu without Ronchamp, Mies without the Seagram Building. However, in what could be called the Wright on Corbu or Mies industry (in the sense of
architectural contribution to the culture-
ology of consumerism.22 This, then, is the
big feature of architectural iconicity
conditions of capitalist globalization,
by that buildings, spaces and architects
iconic to the extent that they symbolize
integrated fruits of the culture-ideology
consumerism.
Now that the competing conceptions of
city that prevail in discussions of archi-
tec today have been set out, we can
add to deconstruct Iconic II icons in
of three basic questions: Iconic for
Iconic for where? Iconic for when?
for whom?
Previous way to approach this question is
linguish between those in and around
structure and the public at large. In what
can a building be said to be iconic for
structure but not for the public? And
conversely, in what sense can a building be
said to be iconic for the public but not for
architecture? The easy answer, the one that
bolsters professional confidence and even
encourages professional snobbery, is that
iconicity is simply a matter of publicity, fash-
ion, self-promotion by the client or the
developer aided and abetted by the architect
and by those who produce the images. The
commercial exploitation of the art of archi-
tural photography is often held up as an
exemplar of this process—one of the best
known cases is the series of iconic photog-
raphs by Julius Shulman of the Case Study
houses in California, particularly Case Study
House #22 in Los Angeles (see Figure 7 and
the originals in Serraino, 2002).23 This
connects with the idea discussed above that
there are no iconic buildings or architects,
only iconic images.
Lipstadt expresses this attitude well in her
case study of Eero Saarinen's St. Louis Arch,
where she distinguishes between the canonic
The canonic is defined in what the well-educated architect value most highly, while “iconic stature” conferred by communities of non-institutes (Lipstadt, 2001, p. 11). This notion makes sense, but is not supported by available evidence. As has been illustrated above, documentary sources tell as my own interviews show that objects, as well as critics, scholars and who are professionally involved with arts, spaces and architects routinely use them iconic to emphasize the special features of objects of their esteem. A few more issues from widely varying sources from their respective internet sites enforce the point. The Principal of the Jaguar College of Architecture has no opinion in calling Le Corbusier’s Chandiwan icon of modern architecture (The Times, 7 October 2003); the Architecture in Palermo, Buenos Aires, teaches the Buildings Perspective as the second of the fundamental methods for research-learning about architecture, through two “iconic houses”—Palladio’s Botonda and Corbu’s Villa Savoye—and that they are “beyond dispute as works for historians, theoreticians, critics and aficionados of architecture”, clearly iconic for professionals implication, some publics (and the School in the University of London something similar); the website of the society at the Illinois Institute of Technology proclaims that “ITT’s main campus is the masterworks of iconic architecture” Architect Colin St. John Wilson will governments of Russia and Finland why an icon Alvar Aalto building in must be restored” (“Bid to save iconic library”, Building Design, 28 March p. 6). And at the DOCOMOMO conference in the session where Lipselivered a version of her paper on St Louis Arch Edwin Bridges of Laboratory designed by Stirling and Gowan”. It is unlikely that many members of the lay public, even in Leicester, have ever heard of this building though Stirling’s iconic status ensures that it has been published widely in architectural magazines and books around the world. It is an icon for professionals but not for the general public.
Even more intriguing for Lipstadt’s thesis is the possibility that while iconic status is conferred by non-architects without help from the canon, those responsible for the canon might be constrained to confer canonic status on a publicly conferred icon. Such questions may usefully be asked about highly publicized buildings like Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao and Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, some skyscrapers in Chinese cities, and what is to replace the Twin Towers in New York. The first phase of my interviewing, from January to June 2004, took place in and around Los Angeles, Boston and New York. This was a time when two new buildings by Frank Gehry were very much in the news, the Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles and the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge near Boston. There was also talk of a project by Gehry in Brooklyn (New York). It was clear from press coverage and my interviews that Gehry and his buildings were considered iconic, even by those who were not comfortable with this terminology. Koenig has written: “It is unusual for a building to achieve status as an icon before it is built, but the Disney Concert Hall has occupied the center of attention since it left the drawing board … [its saills] embody the spirit, exuberance and place that is Los Angeles” (2000, p. 107). This is despite opposition from the displaced homeless in the locality while it was being built and complaints of glare and overheating from condo-dwellers opposite since it opened. It should be noted, however, that historically it is not uncommon for the interior of buildings to come after initial
SKLAIR: ICONIC ARCHITECTURE AND CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION 35
many other commonly cited architec-
tions.
While occasional overlap, Lipstadt's
position between canonic and iconic is too
to deal with these issues. It is more
to distinguish professional icons (a.k.a.
icons of various groups within the
icon) from public icons, opening up
another closing down the possibility that
iconical icons can become public icons
losing their professional iconicity, in
case that just because a building or a
becomes famous outside the architec-
community it need not lose the qualities
which it became famous in and around
the picture. The comments about "Bilbao
Bheim look-alikes" and "if you've
one building by Calatrava or Meier,
seen them all" cited above are
by false, ignoring for example the
materials used for the Bilbao
Bheim and the Disney Concert Hall,
different scales of the Stata Center in
bridge to both of these, and differences
and so on for Calatrava, Meier and
iconic architects. It is more likely
people who are excited by one building
ary or Calatrava or Meier would be
taken to search out their other buildings
think that they have seen them all.
where the unique symbolism/aesthet-
architectural icons—in terms of the
state sanction of specific architectural
tion—that successfully achieve the
er from professional to public,
relevant. This distinction encourages
think through the processes whereby
move from one status to the other, the
initial processes of social production of
and how buildings and spaces might
well as gain iconicity. Cutting the
loose from its representational and
iconal moorings, paradoxically, gives it
powerful explanatory potential when
in the field of architecture. Analyti-
cative in architecture may be a new
and, by implication, for power. Under condi-
tions of capitalist globalization, iconicity is a
key component of what I have termed the
culture-ideology of consumerism, the under-
lying value system of capitalist globalization.
Thus: "Iconic. An incitement to spend
money" (Anon, 2004). The capacity to confer
iconic status on a building, space or architect
is an important resource that the TCC can
mobilize to facilitate the assimilation of the
general public into the culture-ideology of
consumerism, to keep people spending to
maximize profits for the transnational corpora-
tions and their affiliates and the aggrandise-
ment of the class as a whole.
It is in these terms that we can explain the
phenomenon of deliberately manufactured
icons in the global era, where those who
own and control architectural projects
announce their iconic status in advance as a
transnational practice of the culture-ideology of consumerism. Recent typical
examples reported in the architectural media
of this are, from Greece: "Doubt ... hangs
over whether Santiago Calatrava's iconic
Olympic Stadium will be ready in time"
("UK shuns Beijing gold", Building Design,
21 March 2003, p. 6), and from China:
"Tony Blair stepped in to help Foster &
Partners and Arup scoop the £1.2bn
commission to extend Beijing airport, which
was announced this week ... The RIBA's
representative in China, Martin Iles,
welcomed Blair's involvement ... Foster
himself used key contacts, flying often to
Beijing and meeting the ambassador ... the
design team has pledged to 'create a new
icon for China'" ("Blair aids Foster win",
Building Design, 7 November 2003, p. 1);
and from New York: "It took a while for
New York's normally gregarious architec-
tural community to open up after 9/11. 'For
us a lot has changed', says Derek Moore,
an associate at SOM whose offices were adjac-
ent to the WTC ... The firm had just
submitted construction documents for a new
13 September 2002, p. 11). Finally, website of the ICA in Boston told us in what the new Director, Jill Medvedow, guided its successful bid to build a new on Boston’s waterfront, which will be an iconic presence for contemporary Boston”. The TCC in architecture, more, has a delicate balancing act to them in its efforts to feed the stream of buildings, spaces and architects, in the edge that too few means the loss of but too many means the devaluation currency of iconic architecture. Thus, expansion of the geographical scale of architecture is a pressing issue for exist globalization.
for where?
It is obvious that iconic buildings and have to be located in fixed places,27 the physical scale of their iconicity is not Architectural icons can have local, or global significance and recognition any mixture of these three. This is equally to professional icons, public and those that have achieved iconic in both respects. However, under icons of capitalist globalization and the roots of the culture-ideology of consum- the social relations of production of will be similar whatever the intended or scale of their iconicity. I suspect that may not be the case for state and/or reli-icons of the pre-capitalist globalization noted above, while many buildings and are landmarks, not all landmarks are similarly icons for professionals or the at large. Landmarks tend to be tall in them to their surroundings, thus there is an element of this specific physicality not necessary for local icons, though local icons are also tall. Icons, profess- and public alike, inevitably have for professional in contrast to public icons, making the relatively rare cases of crossover iconic architecture—buildings and spaces venerated by both professionals and members of the lay public—particularly significant for questions of taste, high art and popular culture.
Local icons are buildings and spaces that are well known though not necessarily well loved within circumscribed areas, usually in cities and neighbourhoods, with definite symbolic significance for these places. They might be known to outsiders interested in these cities, and local icons in London or New York or Paris will certainly be better known than local icons in Leeds (England), Rochester (New York state) or Nancy (France). Reference has already been made to the St. Louis Arch (Lipstadt, 2001), and another interesting case is Marcel Breuer’s Pirelli building on Interstate 95 outside New Haven on the east coast of the USA. This was originally built for Armstrong Rubber in 1969 and subsequently it was taken over by IKEA who chopped off the back of the building to make room for a car park (ironically, Breuer had been the director of the furniture department at Weimar Bauhaus in the 1920s). Not only does the building provide the iconic gateway to New Haven—in the sense that it is locally famous and that it provides a suitably impressive symbolic entrance to the city—but IKEA, like Wal-Mart, “maintains a uniform, iconic look to their enormous storage” (according to the US National Trust website). No difficulty, then, for a well-informed writer on conservation to mix Iconic I and II. The context ensures that we know what is meant. When the Hypo Center in Klagenfurt, Austria, designed by Thom Mayne’s firm Morphosis of Santa Monica, won the AIA Honor Award in 2003, the Jury’s comments illustrated a related point: “The structure of the bank’s headquarters announces itself as an iconic civic institution.
an boosterism is the most common
feature for deliberately created iconic archi-
sity. So, it is no coincidence that the three
most cited were intended as icons for
St. Louis, New Haven, Klagenfurt),
as those who own and control cities
increasingly, want their cities to be
recognizable for purposes of
prince as well as civic pride—for many
it is little difference, as Dovey (1999,
2001) illustrates for the case of
Curne. Those driving urban boosterism
tately attempt to create urban architec-
tions in order to draw tourists, conven-
d mega-event attendees with money
and the images they project are
added to this end. This is a truly globaliz-
iness, from the TelstraClear Pacific
ment in Manukau (in Auckland,
combining theme, iconic architecture,
functionality to showcase your event),
numerous advertisements for luxury
hotels in Dubai (now marketed as a
iconic city”) and elsewhere that also
indeed one of the necessary, attrac-
and, of course, all over North America
Europe (see Jonas and Wilson, 1999;
2005).
commodification of architecture, like
boosterism, did not spring new-born
late 20th century, nevertheless, there
eral consensus that as capitalist global-
began to be the dominant mode of
tion, distribution and exchange from
the 1950s, architectural practice also
to change. In his paper on "The archi-
of plenty", Kieran (1987, p. 28)
descries this succinctly: "The emerging
of the client is that of a buyer of archi-
services in a free market ... When a
image is felt to be lacking, architec-
ften turned to today for an associative
He illustrates his thesis through the
of the developer Gerald Hines,
the Chicago Architectural Club.
bureaucrat in the UK, the deputy chair of
CABE (the government-sponsored Commission
for Architecture and the Built Environment)
who declares that architects must bend
to commercialism, feeding the market a
pretence of creativity while actually not
doing anything risky. The context of his
remarks is a discussion of the work of the
"ideas" firm of ABK, who failed to win the
contract for the extension of the National
Gallery in London, built eventually by
Venturi, Scott Brown due, it is said, to the
intervention of the traditionalist coterie
around Prince Charles (see Rattenbury, 2002,
chap. 11). Noting the absence of 'iconic
commercial buildings' in ABK's portfolio,
the Commissioner doubted whether any firm
that rejects commercialism could survive in
the current climate (reported in Building
Design, 22 March 2002, p. 20). The National
Gallery in London—with its new Sainsbury
Wing (inviting the "supermarket of art"
sobriquet)—like virtually all major museums
around the world, has become much more
commercialized in recent decades.
Documentary and interview evidence
suggests that every place has its local iconic
buildings and spaces and that these contribute
strongly to place identity and the differen-
tiation of one place from another. While it
might sound faintly ridiculous to call Place
Ville Marie in Montreal or the new Erasmus
Bridge in Rotterdam or the Rotunda Tower
in Birmingham (UK) iconic, in the sense that
few outside these cities would ever have
heard of them or seen images of them, these
buildings and spaces are iconic for their
localities, for the people who see them and
use them on a regular basis. When asked,
most respondents in and around architecture
could name such local icons, buildings
and spaces that everyone in their neighbourhood
or even city would almost certainly have
heard of, for example places where young
adults would congregate, and notably places
where people would go on special occasions.
by the locals as “our Rockefeller Bridge”. This was the period of Expo ’67, when it seems banal and lost among theapers of the city—a lost icon. TheRockefeller Bridge, on the other hand, is what might call a replacement local icon, a stagein succession at the local level. From1950s onwards the most prominent localroad been the Euro Space Tower, alevel of the new Rotterdam rising from theof the 1939–1945 War, a “modernist”level that was reproduced incessantlyin marketing of the city. The new bridge hasled the spire as both the physical iconthe city and as the symbolic icon forventing and marketing the city, fortable on the front of the city map thatyou when you land at the airport andthe laundry bags in local hotels. Theof the Erasmus Bridge is a sleek high-structure of the type generally associwith Santiago Calatrava and plays itsin the regeneration of the Rotterdamfront (see Meyer, 1999). The Rotundathe first prominent round tower inBingham and for no apparent reasonfrom its shape (an example of whatI call the “peculiar aesthetics” of icons) itsurvived as a local icon while the Bullthat dominates the centre of the city hasremolished and redeveloped. But it maybe very roundness of the tower infront to the New Brutalist architecture ofBull Ring that accounted for its localstatus. In 2005, the Rotunda wasreed as a luxury apartment block byenable developers Urban Splash, whoseman enthused: “It’s amazing. We’vebounded before we’ve even done anyanything. Everyone wants to live in an(Birmingham Post, 5 September 2005).Uses issues of the class basis of the usesone architectural icons, a topic thatrepay further research.
we generalize about whatwishes local icons from all the othertheory, especially in the work of KevinLynch. But landmarks in general stand out(usually up as well) and the designation oflandmark has no particular symbolic significance,whereas icons need not stand out orup (in the Rotterdam example a tall spire wasreplaced by a relatively low-lying bridge) butthey must have some institutionallysanctioned symbolic/aesthetic significance tobe iconic at any level. This is what makessense of their perceived symbolic/aestheticqualities, what makes them iconic and thus“famous” in the local context. In the globalera these processes tend to be driven by thecorporate sector, whether or not specificbuildings and spaces are sponsored by thestate or the private sector or both. It isobvious that the business of business isbusiness, less obvious that the business of thestate is, increasingly, business too (Sklair,2001).
National icons historically have tended tobe buildings and spaces constructed bythe state and/or religious bodies and traditionalnational icons have invariably been characterizedby great legibility in terms of theirmonumentality and, often, representationalsculptural features. There is now a considerableliterature on “architecture and power”that investigates how buildings and spaces,especially monumental buildings and spaces,express power relations and how the ordinary citizen and/or believer can read offpolitical and religious values from theseicons.
thereas the iconic architecture of the global era was driven mainly by churchate (often embodied in the same insti- and elites), the iconic architecture of global era is increasingly driven by state interests, embodied in the leading authors of the transnational capitalist class their transnational corporations (see 2005). Though my focus here is on the global era, from the 1950s on, it active to consider older icons.
America, national icons start their as local icons in important cities holders of economic or political or ideology power are or were based. Clearly the case for the major imperi-owers of the past and the present. In AA, national icons are found in Wash-DC (the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial) in New York (certainly the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and many respondents made the case that the Towers of the World Trade Center national icons after 9/11). In Britain, there in London—Buckingham Palace, St. James and Big Ben are the most only cited national icons; in France—Tel Tower and Notre Dame in Paris; in the Coliseum and the Pantheon in China—Tiananmen Square and the Golden City in Beijing; and so on. It is going to observe that most of these icons predate the 20th century and any attempts to build new national in the 20th century appear to have for example, the belated Second World Memorial in Washington (though a case be made for Maya Lin's Vietnam Wall), and the ill-fated Millennium in London. The truly iconic buildings 20th century in these countries in of fame and symbolic/aesthetic appeal infects and public alike are more likely corporate, for example the Empire State Building in New York (pre-ferenced).
Building in Beijing is said to be iconic though its fame and its symbolism appear more corporate than national, certainly “foreign” (see Figure 8b).
Are there any genuinely global icons? In the aftermath of 9/11 there was a good deal of commentary on what the loss of the Twin Towers meant that is relevant to the question. Under the title “Attack on iconic buildings robs us of emotional compasses” an article in the Dallas Morning News (18 September 2001) by David Dillon summed up the issues well: “Iconic buildings tell us where we are, at a glance. The Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, the Gateway [St. Louis] Arch, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Typically, they are large and exhibitionistic so that even a partial glimpse is enough to fix our visual and emotional compass. And when they disappear, a psychological gap appears, as if our memories have suddenly failed and we’ve become disoriented.” And where the buildings themselves are destroyed, the sites are made iconic (see Figure 9). The idea that global icons must be large is a very common one and connects the discussion of iconicity with that of monumentality,32 skylines and what van Leeuwen (1988) terms “the skyward trend of thought” (see also King, 2004, chap. 1). Attoe (1981, chap. 6) provides a useful discussion of how skylines can become icons, the special case being, of course, Manhattan and how it has been portrayed in the media, especially the movies (Sanders, 2001).
Buildings and spaces that have been used in establishing shots and/or foregrounded in globally successful movies and TV shows are almost guaranteed a type of public iconic status today, though this does not mean that members of the public who recognize buildings can either name them or their architects. How many people outside Miami who have seen Miami Vice know the name of the Atlantis Building or have heard of the architecture?
9 The manufacture of the iconic. The plaque reads: "For three decades, this sculpture stood in the Plaza of the Trade Center. Entitled 'The Sphere', it was conceived by artist Fritz Koenig as a symbol of world peace. It was held during the tragic events of September 11 2001, but endures as an icon of hope and the indestructible spirit of unity...". Source: Leslie Sklair.
Artistry Vol. 10, No. 1
Philosophy/aesthetics of iconicity. There is doubt that the electronic revolution that transformed the mass media, the first characteristic of generic globalization, facilitates process to an historically unprecedented. This works for both the past and architecture of present, but not necessarily in the same context.
For when?
My purposes it is useful to draw a line on icons of the pre-global era (before 1950s) and the global era. This chronolates to the research question raised to what extent is it the case that before event of capitalist globalization most architecture was a product of the state religion, whereas since the 1950s the current driver of iconic architecture has the corporate sector? And, if this is true, then we explain it? Why the 1950s? The lies in my original criteria for genericization—the electronic and postcolonial solutions begin then, and as economic, and cultural life are more or less restructured all over the world, the form of cosmopolitanism open up forms of architectural expression and motion (e.g. through the use of new technologies and new materials) and close down (e.g. the widespread and rapid dissemination of images puts a greater premium on originality in architecture).33
There is a surprisingly close general consensus about what buildings and spaces state the major historical global icons with professionals and the lay public. They tend to be monumental build-that have survived the ravages of time in or less recognizable form. The typical will include the Egyptian (Great) dwarf and the Sultan (of City), those of Coliseum in Rome, the Acropolis-Parthenon in Athens, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, major mosques of the Islamic world and the Gothic cathedrals. Architects, teachers and critics (and probably advertising and marketing executives as well) spend endless hours trying to answer questions about what makes great buildings great, what makes famous buildings famous, and the nature of the connections between famous and great. What keeps these places famous, leaving aside the question of what keeps them great, is clearly publicity of various types, as argued above and ample evidence for this statement will be found in the travel guides and promotional literature of the places where these icons sit.
The culture-ideology of tourist consumerism ensures that the pool of these historical icons is continually being enlarged, what Vale (1999) terms “mediated monuments”.
Conclusion
Contemporary iconic architecture is now corporate to an extent that is historically unprecedented. This is embodied in the skyscrapers that proclaim the wealth and power of many transnational corporations, be they banks, manufacturers of consumer goods and services or, as is often the case, the headquarters of corporations that most people know very little about. In addition, there are many iconic buildings and spaces (notably shopping malls, cultural centres and theme parks) that are corporate but not always identified with a specific corporation. Certainly there were corporate icons before 1950 and state and/or religious icons after 1950. Brasilia, the manufactured capital of Brazil, was certainly inspired and built by those in control of the state in the 1950s. However, as Holston (1989) argues, the corporate sector, domestic and foreign, was deeply implicated in the creation of this Modernist City despite the aesthetic realities.
city to be built by a democratic state. Recent theories of the hundred mile city, city and so on suggest that the local national state is powerless to direct planning in any meaningful sense. The conditions of capitalist globalization politicians and professionals help to create successful local, national and even global icons within cities as they do this within the framework set by the corporate sector, as supporting agents of the transnational capitalist class.
TCC facilitates the production of architecture in the same way and for one purposes as it does all cultural icons, incorporating creative artists, to a greater degree, to construct meanings and widely represent its power in order toize commercial benefits for the capitals. The nature of the built environment of icons of resistance confirms. This is similar in some respects and in contrast in other respects to the ways in which state and/or religious elites before the global era facilitated the production of iconic architecture. Further study of iconic architecture in the global and pre-global eras, for example, how iconicity can be lost as well as gained and why most manufactured “icons” are unsuccessful, will expand our knowledge and understanding not only of buildings, spaces and architects but of the wider role of representation and symbolism/aesthetics in making and remaking our world.
Acknowledgements
Collegial comments on various versions of this paper presented in an academic or
and urban diversity (Paris), are gra-
tle-knowledged. Thanks also to my
students (see Note 9) and, in particular,
Bonor Moloney—my architectural
mentor—for their invaluable input to
search on which this paper is based and,
cases, for comments on earlier drafts.
Most comprehensive collection on globalization
leachner and Boli (2003), has 58 items. My
text on globalization splits this literature into
systems, global culture, global policy and
and global capitalism approaches (Sklair,
2, chap. 3).
Globalization plays a central role in the writing of
of the most controversial of contemporary
tectives, Rem Koolhaas, who takes an eccentric
argument that "globalization is a special
arch of architecture [and that] it might finally
to a definitive discrediting of architecture as
now it" (Koolhaas, 1996, p. 232).
The first great wave of political
globalization took place in Latin America during
9th century, I would argue that
colonialism is more a product of the second
wave from the middle of the 20th century in
Africa and the Caribbean. See Desai and
(2005) and Krishnaswamy and Hawley
coming).
Intermed globalization from above and below
Sorkin, 1992; Marcuse and Kempen, 2000).
The creation of transnational social spaces from
by and in immigrant communities, see Smith
Gurizno (1998) and Faist (2000).
Outed in different ways in Beck (1999) and
weave and Cohen (2002).
Never, "The tyranny of computer graphics"
z-Gomez, in Rattenbury, 2002, p. 20] is hotly
established.
For example, Larsen (1993), Twambly (1995)
any issue of magazines like El Craquis,
print or Domus. Ockman (2002) witty
constructs Koolhaas in his own terms as the "YE$
(Y as in Yen, E as in Euros and $ as in
ursel).
Laboration, see Sklair (2002), the third edition
a new title of a book first published in 1991,
leading a new chapter on the alternatives to
alist globalization, a topic not discussed here.
meant architects and the developers, urban
planners, teachers, critics and others who come
into direct contact with them in an architectural
context.
10 As usual there are exceptions. Andy Warhol's
images of Campbell's soup cans are of course
much more valuable in the art market than the cans
are in the soup market.
11 According to Jencks (2005, p. 56) "The iconic
building is unthinkable today with reference to
... Ronchamp".
12 Dovey (1999, p. 198, n. 3) states that the meaning
of iconic in architecture has shifted from mimetic
(copy) to synchdoche (part for whole). I deal with
this issue differently below.
13 This topic produced six pages of discussion.
However, about two weeks later, "Why are famous
architects famous?" produced 98 pages,
suggesting that architecture students are more
interested in how architects become iconic than
how buildings become iconic. This is certainly
related to the culture-ideology of consumerism and
the cult of celebrity that accompanies it, as I shall
argue below.
14 In "The myths of the Mies Pavilion", at the
DOCOMOMO Conference (Paris, 2002)
E. M. Coa argues that it was the photographs
Mies contrived that were largely responsible for its
passing into history "as a temple to Modernist
architecture" rather than the original building itself,
which caused riots (see DOCOMOMO website).
15 These quotations are from the report in Building
Design (13 December 2002). In Summer 2004 it was announced that funding had been cancelled
for the Fourth Grace and other "iconic" projects by Libeskind and Vinoly, leading Building Design (23
July 2004) to ask on its front page: "End of the
iconic age?" See also, Jencks and Sudjic (2005).
Jencks (2005)—published after my paper was
substantially written—discusses the idea of iconicity in architecture in terms of enigmatic signifiers,
certainly one type of the symbolic/aesthetic
dimension of my definition. I discuss this important work in Sklair, forthcoming.
16 There is, of course, still a formidable ongoing
literature on religious icons. The catalogue of the major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on "Byzantium" (Evans, 2004) is an excellent guide.
17 The only architect featured in the book is Robert
Venturi and he chooses the McDonald's Golden
Arches as his top American icon (clearly an iconic I
choice). While all are valuable for the study of
architectural icons, none of Boime (1998) on
national icons. Koniejs's Iconic LA (2000), the
an exceptionally valuable discussion of glass in architecture of the grand projects see Fierro (203), Chapter 4 of this book contains the most thoughtful discussion of the pyramids at the Louvre. It would carry more conviction if Foreign Office architects had not won some prestigious projects competed unsuccessfully for other major iconic objects, including the World Trade Center site. References to papers from this conference are in the DOCOMOY website (1996), my best guide to “modern architecture”, has more than 800 illustrations, and one in a sense could be considered iconic for architects.
Issue will be investigated with respect to the Skok Loyd Wright industry in a forthcoming merger. Grateful to Julius Shulman for an informative discussion of this issue in February 2004, and to Toto and Buck Stahl who kindly invited me to attend time in Case Study House #22 in Los Angeles to see for myself.
Part of a special issue on “What makes a work of architectural” in Harvard Design Magazine (Summer 1911). The remarkable “Evolutionary tree of 20th century architecture” by Charles Jencks (ibid., 45–46, after Jencks, 1985, p. 28), naming architects, implies grave difficulties with the use of the canon evidenced, though not without tradition, by the majority of my interviewees.
Le Koenig’s point is well taken, my research shows that the practice of claiming iconicity for buildings in advance is common. This can be trained in terms of the marketing imperative built into the culture-ideology of consumerism. For a practical assessment of the politics of Gehry’s work, Davis (1992, pp. 236–240).
The book edited by Thiel-Silving (2005), first edition 8, presents double-page spreads for 87 “icons of 20th century architecture” on the criteria of architectural history, popularity, originality or symbolic value. This mixes professional and literal icons.
Are there as usual, a few exceptions that prove rule. For example, London Bridge was taken in and re-assembled in Arizona in 1971 (na, 2004), and a prospective buyer proposed building the Farnsworth House from Illinois to consign. Architects are, of course, more mobile than their buildings.
One won the Pritzker prize in 2005. An earlier interview with Hines by one of the so-called New York Five is quite revealing (see Humman, 1982). For the political background on downtown Jersey, see Frieden and Soehner (1981).
(1989), Vale (1992), Wharton (2001) and Fierro (2003).
31 For quite different approaches, compare Crinson (1996) and Cody (2003). Crinson’s sympathetic critique of the application of “Orientalism” (Said, 1978) to architecture is of particular interest.
32 For the debates around the issue of “monumentality” in the 20th century, see Collins and Collins (1984), and the reprint of Giedion’s paper of 1944. The need for a new monumentality in this same issue of the Harvard Architecture Review. Giedion (1984) argued that monumentality needed to be recovered from its totalitarian distortions and recreated in an emotionally literate and democratic form.
Restrictions of space prevent me from exploring the relations between monumentality and iconicity here—suffice it to say that members of the transnational capitalist class appear to prefer their iconicity in skyscraper form, but not entirely to the exclusion of other innovative forms (Frank Gehry, for example, has not built skyscrapers, yet!).
33 See also the distinction between “age-value” and “newness-value” (Riegl, 1998) in his discussion of what he called in 1928 the “modern cult of monuments”.
References
Attoe, W. (1981) Skylines: Understanding and Moulding Urban Silhouettes. Chichester: Wiley.
Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Betsley, A. (1997) Icons: Magnetts of Meaning. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Boime, A. (1988) The Unveiling of the National Icons: A Plea for Patriotic Iconicism in a Nationalist Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boudon, P. (1972) Lived-in Architecture: Le Corbusier’s Pessac Revisited. London: Lund Humphries.
Broadbent, G. (1973) Design in Architecture: Architecture and Human Sciences. London: Wiley.
Castells, M. (2000) Rise of the Network Society: Oxford: Blackwell.
Chung, C., Inaba, J., Koolhaas, R. and Leong, S.T. (eds) (2001) Great Leap Forward. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Design School.
Cody, J. (2003) Exporting American Architecture: 1870–2000. London: Routledge.
Collins, C. and Collins, G. (1984) Monumentality: a critical matter in modern architecture. Harvard Architecture Review IV, pp. 15–35.
Crimson, M. (1996) Empire Building: Orientalism and Virtueian Architecture. London: Routledge.
A. (1996) Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon.
B. (1992) City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Angeles. New York: Vintage Books.
**C. and Nair, S. (eds) (2005) Postcolonialisms: An Ethology of Cultural Theory and Criticism. Oxford: M.I.
D. (1999) Framing Places: Mediating Power in Form. London: Routledge.
E. P. (1982) 'Interview: Gerald Hines and Peter Human', Skyline, October.
F. E. M. (2004) Byzantium: Faith and Power (1-1557). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Yale University Press.
G. (2000) The Volume and Dynamics of Migration. Oxford University Press.
H. (2003) The Glass State: The Technology of the Antique, Paris, 1981-1998. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
J. J. and Sagalyn, L.B. (1991) Downtown, Inc. America Rebuilds Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
K. M. (1999) Architecture + Process. Gehry, London: Thames & Hudson.
L. S. (1984) The need for a new monumentality', Harvard Architecture Review IV.
M. E.H. (1972) Symbolic Images: Studies in the Duality of the Renaissance. London: Phaidon.
N. d. and Haagsga, J. (1988) Architects in Competition. London: Thames and Hudson.
O. E. and McChusney, R. (1997) The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. London: Cassell.
P. J. (1989) The Modernist City: An Epitomological Critique of Brasília. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Q. H. (1998) Supermodernism: Architecture in the Globalization. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers.
R. J. (1985) Modern Movements in Architecture. London: Penguin.
S. (2005) The Iconic Building: The Power of a Mama. London: Frances Lincoln.
T. and Sudjic, D. (2005) Can we still believe in civic buildings?', Prospect, June, pp. 22-26.
U. and Wilson, D. (eds) (1999) The Urban Machine: Critical Perspectives, Two Decades Albany. State University of New York Press.
V. (1987) 'The architecture of plenty: theory and sign in the marketing age', Harvard Architecture Review 10.1-11.
W. (2004) Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture Anonymity Identify, London: Routledge.
X. E. (ed.) (1999) Oxford Dictionary of Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Y. D. (2000) Iconic LA: Paradise, CA: Navigator Practices in the Nineties, pp. 232-239. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Krishnaswamy, R. and Hawley J. (eds) The Postcolonial and the Global. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (forthcoming).
Larson, M.S. (1993) Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late Twentieth-century America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lechner, F. and Boli, J. (eds) (2003) The Globalisation Reader, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lehmann-Haupt, H. (1954) Art Under a Dictatorship. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lipstadt, H. (ed.) (1989) The Experimental Tradition: Essays on Competitions in Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Lipstadt, H. (2001) 'Learning from St. Louis', Harvard Design Magazine, 14, pp. 4-15.
Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marcuse, P. and Kempen R.v. (eds) (2000) Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order. Oxford: Blackwell.
Meyer, H. (1999) City and Port: London, Barcelona, NY and Rotterdam. Utrecht: International Books.
Migayrou, F. and Brayer, M.-A. (eds) (2003) Archilab: Radical Experiments in Global Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.
Ockman, J. (2002) 'The yes man', Architecture,March, pp. 77-82.
Pawley, M. (1999) Norman Foster: A Global Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.
Rattenbury, K. (ed.) (2002) This is Not Architecture. London: Routledge.
Riegel, A. (1998) 'The modern cult of monuments: its character and its origins', in K.M. Hays ed. Oppositions: Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1972-1984, pp. 621-651 New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sanders, J. (2001) Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. Bloomsbury.
Sarkis, H. (2001) Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital. Berlin: Strellet Verlag.
Seidler, H. (2004) The Grand Tour: Travelling the World with an Architect's Eye. Koln: Taschen.
Serraino, P. (2002) 'Framing icons: Two Girls, two audiences. The photographing of Case Study House #22', in K. Rattenbury (ed.) This is Not Architecture, chap. 10.1-11.
Sklair, L. (2001) The Transnational Capitalist Class. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sklair, L. (2002) Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sklejr, J. (2005) The transnational capitalist class and...
SKLAIR: ICONIC ARCHITECTURE AND CAPITALIST GLOBALIZATION 47
Review article: Do cities need icons?', Urban Airs (forthcoming).
And Guarizo, L. (eds) (1998) Transnationalism.
M. (ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park.
New York: Noonday.
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
M. (ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park.
New York: Noonday.
Wang, S. (ed.) (2005) Icons of Architecture: The 21st Century. Munich: Prestel.
P. (2001) 'A true south for design?': the new international division of labour in architecture', Architectural Research Quarterly 5: 171-179.
(2001) Preserving the World's Great Cities.
New York: Clarkson Potter.
R. (1995) Power and Style: A Critique of nineteenth-century Architecture in the United States.
New York: Hill and Wang.
(1992) Architecture, Power, and Nationality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
(1999) 'Mediated monuments and national identity', Journal of Architecture 4: 391-408.
van Leeuwen, T. (1988) The Skyward Trend of Thought: The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Venturi, R., Brown, D.S. and Izenour, S. (1977) Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vertovec, S. and Cohen, R. (eds) (2002) Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wharton, A.J. (2001) Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zukin, S. (1996) The Cultures of Cities. Oxford: Blackwell.
Leslie Sklair is at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. E-mail: l.sklair@lse.ac.uk