The Iconic Building Is Here to Stay

Author: Charles Jencks
Year: 2006 (City 10(1), 3–20)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/jencks-2006-iconic-building-here-to-stay.md

Summary

Jencks argues (contra Sudjic and others) that the "iconic building" is not a passing fashion but a genre that is "here to stay," because it reflects deep economic and ideological forces of global, late-capitalist society without common religious beliefs. The iconic building replaces the (failed) monument; it operates through "enigmatic signifiers" that must be multiple and "cosmogenic" to avoid the one-liner. Jencks analyzes the decline of belief and the monument, the "spiritual inflation" (anything can be an icon), the double bind of the starchitect, and proposes elements of good practice for a "a code of good practice" for the genre.

Key Claims

• The iconic building replaces the monument: monuments "have lost their power to persuade"; the iconic building, an "icon without a clear iconography" / "enigmatic signifier," takes their place. The Place de la Concorde obelisk is the "first icon of calculated ambiguity."
• Spiritual inflation and anything-as-icon: "when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing—they believe in anything" (Chesterton); the media gave the World Trade Center ruins "an enduring religious presence"; "An icon always has a trace of sanctity about it." The erosion of hierarchy/deference means a banal building type (Selfridges, Prada) "has appropriated the position of the church"; "money is the only universal in which a global culture believes."
• The double bind and the starchitect: politicians demand the "wow factor"/"Bilbao Effect"; "the 'iconic architect' is thus encouraged to take risks, break the rules ... the necessity to shock." Architects are "damned if they don't compete to be outrageous, and damned when their risks look stupid."
• Enigmatic signifiers must be multiple and cosmic: against the "one-liner" (Heatherwick's "B for Bang"), successful icons code "multiple metaphors," alluding to nature and the cosmos: "if you scratch an iconic building hard enough, it bleeds such meanings: overtones of the sun and water; fish and animals; crystals and our body parts." "Cosmogenesis ... will become the ultimate referent" — cosmic architecture.
• The genre is structural: critics' "wishful thinking" that "the iconic age is over" "is based on a false historical analogy"; "fashion and style are a distraction from the main determinants of the trend, the economic and ideological issues of a global society."
• A "code of good practice": demand "more thought on the iconography behind the buildings, more coherence in the use of metaphors, and the careful interweaving of many codes to neutralize those embarrassing mistakes that come with any high-risk venture."

Connections

Concepts: Enigmatic Signifier · Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Spectacle · Consumerism
Authors: Charles Jencks · Frank Gehry
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: Visuality Peaks, Function Lasts (Alaily-Mattar) · The Age of Spectacle (Dyckhoff)

Direct Quotes

"[T]he iconic building is an over-determined genre, it has many deep causes that find support in the economy and society."

"An icon always has a trace of sanctity about it, the aura of a saint."

"[I]f you scratch an iconic building hard enough, it bleeds such meanings: overtones of the sun and water; fish and animals; crystals and our body parts."

"Fashion and style are a distraction from the main determinants of the trend, the economic and ideological issues of a global society."

Open Questions

• Does Jencks's defense of the "enigmatic signifier" and "cosmogenic" icon offer a substantive normative criterion, or is it a rationalization of spectacle? And does the "Bilbao Effect" (as image-capital, per Foster/Heindl) confirm or complicate his account of the genre?