Iconicity versus Contemporary Architecture

Author: Ehab Nasr & Alaa Mandour (Helwan University, Cairo)
Year: 2024 (Global Built Environment Review 9(3), 3–18)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/nasr-mandour-2024-iconicity-versus-contemporary-architecture.md

Summary

Nasr and Mandour analyze what qualifies a building as "iconic," considering iconicity as a symbolic, phenomenological, and place-making quality. Following Jencks and Norberg-Schulz, they examine icons through four dimensions — identity and culture, memory, meaning, and place — and compare case studies (the Pyramids of Giza, Sydney Opera House, Burj Al Arab, Guggenheim Bilbao). They also critique the collapsing of "iconic" into gimmick/commodified "signature architecture," and call for requalifying the term for buildings that are functional, contextual, and culturally meaningful.

Key Claims

• Defining the icon: the icon is an aesthetic/symbolic sign (Morris: "the aesthetic sign is an iconic sign whose design is a value"); iconicity "reflects the increasing commodification of the profession and its marginalization within society ... architecture's shift from serving the public good to serving private interests." Jencks: "an iconic building is created to make a splash, to make money."
• Four dimensions of iconicity: identity and culture (icons "form the collective culture," symbolize society's identity and history); memory (icons "affect the collective memory" and the memory of place); meaning (icons carry cultural, symbolic, and message content); and place (icons "exemplify place making," create the distinctive aspect of a site, and "reverberate human life" — a phenomenological relation).
• Iconicity across history: from the pyramids and the Seven Wonders to Palladio, Wren, Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies, Utzon's Opera House, the Eiffel Tower — icons signal cultural and civilizational depth and technological innovation.
• The critique of signature architecture: post-modern "signature architects or starchitects monopolize short lists" and "sometimes build edifices that don't seem to address programmatic or functional needs very well"; "Iconic has become identical with crazy caps on high rise buildings."
• Requalifying "iconic": "It is time to re-suitable the word iconic for the purpose for which it was firstly anticipated" — "entrenched architecture which is gorgeous, efficient, a welcome appendage to the communal and physical surroundings, and a commendable evidence to the culture of its time."
• Norberg-Schulz: the sign "fixes the environment to organize a surrounding," expressing manners, socio-culture, tradition and history; environmental organization has physical, social, and cultural aspects.

Connections

Concepts: Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Atmosphere · Spectacle
Authors: Ehab Nasr & Alaa Mandour · Charles Jencks · Christian Norberg-Schulz
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: The Iconic Building Is Here to Stay (Jencks) · Genius Loci (Norberg-Schulz)

Direct Quotes

"[I]conic buildings are not only symbols of creativity and originality ... they are so much more than structures."

"[T]he issue of iconicity ... reflects the increasing commodification of the profession and its marginalization within society."

"Iconic has become identical with crazy caps on high rise buildings."

"It is time to re-suitable the word iconic for the purpose for which it was firstly anticipated."

Open Questions

• Does the requalification of "iconic" (contextual, functional, culturally meaningful) offer a usable normative standard, or is it a curricular/educational ideal given the continued dominance of star-architecture and commodified iconicity?