The Icon Project: Architecture, Cities, and Capitalist Globalization

Author: Leslie Sklair
Year: 2017 (Oxford University Press)
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/sklair-2017-the-icon-project.md

Summary

Sklair's major monograph elaborating "The Icon Project": the systematic production, marketing, and insertion of iconic architecture into cities under capitalist globalization, framed as "defending ideas rather than territory." He defines iconicity by fame plus symbolic/aesthetic significance, analyzes the role of the transnational capitalist class (and its fractions) as "authorized agents" of the icon, and examines the "centrality of the image," city branding, and the conversion of public space into consumerist space — culminating in the "culture-ideology of consumerism."

Key Claims

• The Icon Project as a hegemonic project: iconic architecture is produced, marketed, and inserted into cities as part of a systematic project of the transnational capitalist class — "defending ideas rather than territory." Iconic architecture is defined as buildings/spaces that are famous and carry special symbolic/aesthetic significance (Iconic I copy vs Iconic II unique-selling-point).
• The TCC as "authorized agents": the TCC (with its corporate, state, technical, and consumerist fractions) organizes the production of iconic architecture and its circulation; architects/starchitects act as authorized agents of this project, their symbolic capital attached to the icon.
• The centrality of the image: iconicity is produced and iterated through the image and the media; representation (drawings, renders, media coverage) is central to how iconicity is generated and circulates.
• City branding and consumerist space: iconic architecture turns public space into consumerist space and serves city branding — the globalizing city as a node of the "Icon Project"; "iconic architecture and the creation/proliferation of consumerist space" (Ivanovmava/Plaza critique).
• A critical/alternative frame: while intertwined with global capitalism, Sklair leaves open the possibility that "truly inspiring iconic architecture" might, under alternative (non-capitalist) globalization, create "genuinely democratic public spaces."

Connections

Concepts: Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Consumerism · Spectacle · Neoliberal Metropolis
Authors: Leslie Sklair
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: The Transnational Capitalist Class (2005) · Iconic Architecture and Capitalist Globalization (2006) · Iconic ordure (Lang)

Direct Quotes

"[T]he centrality of the image in the production and iteration of iconicity." (Sklair's thesis, via Lang's discussion)

"[I]conic architecture can be considered as a globalised product 'defending ideas rather than territory.'" (Sklair, as characterized)

Open Questions

• Does the "Icon Project" account adequately address the material production (construction, labour, finance) of the icon, or does it overprivilege representation/image — as Ruth Lang's critique suggests?