Autistic Architecture: The Fall of the Icon and the Rise of the Serial Object of Architecture

Author: Maria Kaika
Year: 2011 (Environment and Planning D 29(6), 968–992)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/kaika-2011-autistic-architecture.md

Summary

Kaika interprets the parallel "banalisation of old and proliferation of new 'iconic' corporate architecture" as the "Janus-faced manifestation of a qualitative shift in the relationship between capital and architecture." Highlighting the shift from place-bound, place-loyal urban elites to "footloose transnational elites," she argues that new corporate buildings institute a new "radical imaginary" (Castoriadis) — and should not be called "icons" but "autistic architecture": self-absorbed, self-referential "serial objects" (Baudrillard) indifferent to the city (the Gherkin, etc.).

Key Claims

• The Janus-faced shift: the banalisation of early-20th-century corporate icons (Chanin, AT&T palace, Seagram, Rockefeller) and the proliferation of new "icons" (Swiss-Re, CCTV, Petronas, Ferrari World) register "a qualitative shift in the relationship between urban elites and architectural patronage" — from place-loyal tycoons (Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Carnegie) to "footloose transnational elites," Sklair's "Transnational Capitalist Class," "a regime of power without responsibility" (Sennett).
• Castoriadis and the radical imaginary: architecture narrativises elites' desires and is "a key component in instituting a society's radical imaginary during moments of change"; the icon as "urban totem" — "one of the most effective means for instituting new elite power." Symbolic values must be renewed for a new generation of elites.
• What distinguishes autistic architecture: unlike earlier icons that "ennobled" workers (Wright's Johnson Wax; Fordist public spaces), contemporary corporate objects are marked by lack of commitment to employees (workers must not "feel throbbed there"), lack of engagement with the city (buildings as "self-contained machines," "islands"), and a changed relation to time (built for quick turnover, "their death incorporated in the design process"; a 20–50 year life).
• Autistic vs. iconic: "autism n. A pathological self-absorption and preoccupation with the self to the exclusion of the outside world." The new corporate "icons" "demonstrate a 'pathological self-absorption' ... They act predominantly as branding objects of transnational corporations," indifferent to the real city; they are "serial" (Baudrillard), mass-produced yet claiming originality (Gehry's replicated Bilbao forms; the bullet repeated in Barcelona's Torre Agbar, Chicago's Spire).
• Become iconic by ritual, not design: iconicity depends "more by ritual than by design" — the conditions of production, cultural values, power structures (Benjamin's aura), not design quality alone.

Connections

Concepts: Autistic Architecture · Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Neoliberal Metropolis · Ideology
Authors: Maria Kaika
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: Architecture and Crisis (Kaika 2010) · The Architecture of the City (Bismarck)

Direct Quotes

"A pathological self-absorption and preoccupation with the self to the exclusion of the outside world." (defining autism)

"[T]his new type of architecture, which I term 'autistic architecture', does not engage with the city that surrounds it."

"[T]he proliferation of this new generation of corporate 'iconic' commissions has to be interpreted as part of the process of instituting a new system of imaginary significations."

"These buildings act predominantly as branding objects of transnational corporations that often have no prior links to the city in which they locate their headquarters."

Open Questions

• If contemporary icons are "serial objects" that disavow originality while claiming it, how does "autistic architecture" relate to the "architectural object" of Bismarck and the "instantly iconic" of brand-driven starchitecture — and can it ever be critical or publicly embedded?