Aspirational Identity Artefact
Aspirational Identity Artefact
Definition
An aspirational identity artefact is Zamparini, Gualtieri & Lurati's term for an iconic building in the making — during ideation, approval, and construction — that is "mobilised in discourse to inform productive idealisations of city identity by powerful urban actors." Borrowing "aspirational" from performative discourse theory ("aspirational talk" as "productive idealizations" that cannot yet be enacted but are brought into existence by declaring the intent to pursue them), the concept names the anticipation effect of the icon: before it exists, the building project orients city-identity claims, while actors simultaneously draw on collective memory, present understandings, and future aspirations to infuse the evolving project with meaning. The icon thus functions as a "temporal bridge" between a lost past and an aspired future — a future-oriented monument whose identity-work happens before construction, not only after.
Key Thinkers
- Alessandra Zamparini, Gastone Gualtieri & Francesco Lurati — the originators of the concept, via the Locarno PalaCinema case (2004–2019).
- Charles Jencks — the "enigmatic signifier" and the icon as "monument to the future," which the concept extends into the pre-material phase.
- Leslie Sklair — the Icon Project's image-driven iconicity, against which the aspirational artefact foregrounds discourse and identity rather than capital circulation.
- (Related, not yet paged: Christensen, Morsing & Thyssen on "aspirational talk"; Thornborrow & Brown on "aspirational identities"; Anderson's "imagined community.")
Related Concepts
- Iconic Architecture — the aspirational artefact is the icon in its pre-construction, anticipatory phase.
- Star Architecture — the commissioning/authorial context that often produces aspirational artefacts.
- Spectacle — the image-economy register the aspirational artefact anticipates but does not yet inhabit.
- Symbolic Capital — the identity meanings the artefact reifies and legitimises.
- Instagrammability — the post-construction media circulation that the aspirational artefact precedes.
Source Support
Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:
Open Questions
- How does the "aspirational artefact"/anticipation effect relate to the wiki's focus on the icon's post-construction media circulation (Instagram, the Bilbao effect) — are they continuous phases of one process or distinct regimes?
- Does the aspirational artefact's identity-work survive construction, or does it collapse into the generic hypermodern icon once built?