Architecture and the Culture-Ideology of Consumerism

This chapter sets out to explore the theoretical and substantive connections between iconicity and consumerism in the field of contemporary architecture and urban design. The culture-ideology of consumerism refers to a set of beliefs and values, integral to the system of global capitalism, intended to make people believe that human worth is best created and hap­piness best achieved in terms of consumption and possessions. Although she uses different terms, Juliet Schor (1993) expresses very well the view of consumerism on which my argument rests. While I share her emphasis on producerism, I would explain it as a direct consequence of how the major transnational corporations operate. My argument in what follows assumes that capitalist globalization and consumerism are unsustainable in the long run, due to the crises of class polarization and ecological stress they engender (Sklair 2002: 48–57). Not all culture is ideological, even in capitalist societies. Consumerism in the capitalist global system can only be fully understood as culture-ideology, where cultural practices (embedded in socio-economic institutions) reinforce the ideology of capitalist consumerism and the ideology (embedded in common sense beliefs) reinforces the cultural practices. The brand-stretching campaign of the locally iconic Boston Public Library in 2004 (figure 7.1) embellished by the slogan ‘Books Are Just the Beginning’ is a telling example of the links between architecture and consumerism in practice. Libraries are not exempt. This is a first indication of how the Icon Project in architecture operates at the local level. More or less all space is potentially consumerist space, but there is certainly a continuum from maximally consumerist space, in which users are provided with many opportunities to spend money and few opportunities not to (e.g., shopping malls) to minimally consumerist space, in which there are very few if any opportunities to spend money (e.g., cemeteries; the families have already spent the money and for others this may only be a matter of time).

Corporate Starchitects and Unique Icons

Although some find it unpleasant and others find it flippant, the term ‘starchitect’ is theoretically useful for the sociology of architecture. It connects the world of the architect with the world of celebrity, and it con­nects architecture as an esoteric aesthetic practice with architecture as an industry in the public eye. Over the last few years, the term has become well established in the mass media and in trade publications, and it is also, slowly, starting to be taken seriously by scholars in and around architecture (e.g., McNeill 2009, Ponzini and Nastasi 2011; Knox 2012; Gravari-Barbas and Renard-Delautre 2015). The quest for fame, of course, is not new. Leon Battista Alberti, universal man, prodigious self-promoter of the early renaissance, and still an architectural notable, wrote an allegorical play on fame in the 1440s, recently reprinted (Alberti 1987). Neither Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959) nor Le Corbusier (1887–1965, Corb) shunned public­ity; both were what we would now call celebrities. Their rivalry is well documented, mostly in arguments around different conceptions of modernism—they never met. Noting that Wright called the Villa Savoye, one of Corb’s most celebrated buildings, ‘a box on stilts’, the cultural historian Nicholas Cox Weber, in his life of Corb, comments: ‘Today, it is an icon of twentieth-century design and has spawned countless imitations all over the world’ (2008: 288; see also Etlin 1994). Wright and Corb died around the time capitalist globalization was beginning to establish itself as a truly global system, and their own lives contained significant measures of socially produced iconicity. Although these terms were not used about them during their lifetimes, they can be considered proto-global and proto-iconic architects, by which I mean that the terms ‘global’ and ‘iconic’ are fruitfully employed today about them and their surviving architectural works. So, before considering the starchitects of our time, it is instructive first of all to delve briefly into the careers of these two most iconic architects of the first half of the 20th century. Wright and Corb both enjoy institutional legacies and continue to have plenty of enthusiasts.

The Architecture Industry and Typical Icons

This chapter aims to fill in the substance of the first component of the corporate fraction of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in architecture and urban design, the major architecture firms. While the starchitects and signature architects who produce unique architectural icons have attracted most media attention, they are a very small group within the profession. Here, the focus is on the much larger group of architecture firms producing the successful typical icons that are transforming cities all round the world in the era of capitalist globalization. Infrastructure is an increasingly large part of this, and I introduce the idea of celebrity infrastructure to highlight how bridges, transportation hubs, and waterside developments are mobilized as the Icon Project strives to turn them into consumerist spaces. Here the focus is more on the projects than the firms. As we saw in the previous chapter, contrary to the claims of many architecture critics and theorists, iconicity is not simply a creation of the media or corporate publicists. Architects play a significant part in the social production of iconic architecture, making some of them active participants in the Icon Project. As Dion Kooijman (2000: 829) argues, ‘architecture can form a true part of the “image building” by PR and marketing departments’. Behind the general discussion of the ways in which the four fractions of the TCC serve the interests of capitalist globalization through creating and promoting iconic architecture is the idea that, as well as the symbolism and aesthetics of iconic buildings and spaces, there is something else going on of great significance. Two pioneering studies, Blau (1984) and Gutman (1988), researched architecture as an industry in the United States. Judith Blau focused more on architects themselves, reporting a key finding that 98 per cent of respondents (she surveyed 400 architects in New York) said that architects were distinct from other professionals in terms of the ‘mystique of artistic creativity’ (Blau 1984: 49), but that most architects never realize this goal. This was seen to be a problem for architecture, particularly in capitalist societies.

The Politics of Iconic Architecture

The political fraction of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in architecture and urban design is made up of national, international, and transnational politicians and officials at all levels of administrative power and responsibility. They operate in communities, cities, states, and international and global institutions. They make decisions on what gets built where, how changes to the built environment are regulated, and on issues of urban preservation. The TCC facilitates the production of iconic architecture in the same way and for the same purposes as it does all cultural icons, by incorporating creative artists to construct meanings and aesthetics that effectively represent its power in order to maximize profits for the capitalist class. In his very widely reviewed book on megaprojects and risk, Bent Flyvbjerg (2003: 16) states, ‘Cost underestimation and overrun cannot be explained by error and seem to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, namely lying, with a view to getting projects started.’ It seems to me sensible to bear this apparently extreme statement in mind when thinking about the relations between politicians and professionals in this field. The political fraction of the TCC in architecture divides into two over­lapping groups and two sets of institutions. First, there are globalizing state officials and politicians and their nominees in public agencies who promote, award, permit, or refuse contracts for important national or subnational (usually urban) projects. Governments and local authorities organize competitions, sometimes inviting entries from domestic or foreign architects. The selection of iconic foreign architects for prestigious national and urban projects has become a feature of the era of capitalist globalization. The second group com­prises inter-state and transnational officials and politicians who are influential for architectural projects promoted as sites or buildings with global significance. Others confer a sort of transnational political iconicity on existing buildings and places, notably through the World Heritage Site system of UNESCO (Edensor 1998: 184–7). The work of private transnational non-governmental organizations is also important. For example, the title and mission statement of the World Monuments Fund, ‘Saving the world’s architectural masterpieces and important cultural heritage sites from damage and destruction’, have a deliberately official ring.

Two Types of Iconic Architecture

The debate around iconic architecture has been undermined by the general failure to recognize that there are and probably always have been two forms of iconicity in terms of fame and symbolic/ aesthetic significance. These are (1) unique icons (buildings recognized as works of art in their own right) and (2) typical icons (buildings successfully copying elements of unique icons). My argument in this book is that the transnational capitalist class mobilizes these two distinct but related forms to promote an ideological message, identified here as the culture-ideology of consumerism. This is what I mean by the Icon Project. The rise of iconic architecture can be explained in parallel with the decline of monumental architecture. Since the end of the Second World War and the defeat of the fascist dictatorships in Europe and Japan, debate around monumentality as a public expression of architectural representation has moved on to new ground. Although it has by no means disappeared (conflating monumental with iconic is common), bombastic monumentality has become increasingly discredited as an architectural strategy for those in power. The breakup of the Soviet empire in the 1990s and the creation of new regimes in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and central Asia added some further, often contradictory, elements to the debate (Molnar 2013). Gradually, architectural iconicity began to replace monumentality as the central motif in these discussions. This chapter sets out to show how architectural iconicity has been socially produced by the corporate fraction of the transnational capitalist class in architecture and has begun to replace monumentality as a marker of the global hegemony of the dominant class. Iconicity in architecture (or indeed in any other field of endeavour) does not simply happen; it is the end result of deliberate practices created by specific people working in specific institutions. Architects often recall the local architectural icons of their childhood. Formal or informal socialization into the field of architecture appears to involve the recognition of architectural icons at all levels, brought to attention not only by teachers and mentors but also by the professional media of architecture and the general coverage of economic, political, and cultural news involving architecture and urban design in the mass media.

Iconic Architecture and Capitalist Globalization

In previous publications I have set out a theoretical framework to guide substantive research on this qualitatively new phase of capitalism in global perspective (Sklair 2001, 2002). This framework identifies the basic unit of analysis as transnational practices, practices that cross existing state bor­ders and whose agents and institutions include combinations of non- state and state actors (sometimes overlapping categories), at the local, urban, national, international, transnational, and global levels. The key players in the economic sphere are the major transnational corporations; the politi­cal sphere is dominated by the transnational capitalist class (TCC); and in the culture-ideology sphere consumerism dominates. The general problem with capitalism, intensified in the era of capitalist globalization, is that it cannot resolve two crises inherent in capitalism as a mode of production and social organization, namely, class polarization and ecological unsustainability. Class polarization is the consequence of the growing numbers of the very rich, the persistence of very large numbers of very poor people, increasing economic insecurity of those in between and widening gaps be­tween the very rich and the rest. The ecological crisis is the consequence of the culture-ideology of consumerism, characterized by an obsession with unlimited growth serviced by a destructive fossil- fuel energy system, de­fined as an addiction to more and more possessions and to constantly novel experiences (Sklair 2002: esp. 48–53, 2009a; D’Alisa et al. 2014). These are the conditions under which almost everyone in the world today must live. Architecture has not been exempt from the general pressures exerted by the rise of capitalist globalization. The Icon Project in architecture and urban design driven by the TCC is one important weapon in the struggle to create and solidify capitalist hegemony in the global era. To document and explain how this process works in the field of architecture and urban design is the object of the book. In the pre-global era, the centuries before the start of the electronic revolution in the 1960s, what we now term iconic architec­ture tended to be the preserve of religious or political elites (Kostof 2000).

Introduction

Never before in the history of human society has the capacity to produce and deliver goods and services been so efficient and so enormous, thanks to the electronic revolution that started in the 1960s and the global logistics revolution made possible by the advent of the shipping container. And, paradoxically, never before in the history of human society have so many people wanted goods and services that they cannot afford to buy, largely due to the absolute increases in human populations and the relative ease of communications brought about, again, by the electronic revolution. The results are class polarization and ecological unsustainability, fatal contradictions to the promises of the capitalist system. These contradictions play out in all spheres of economic, social, and cultural life and those who have a vested interest in maintaining the ruling system are constantly attempting to distract attention from its failings. These failings are disguised by the spectacular architecture that now spans most regions of the world, from the great cities of the Global North, to the expanding megacities of the Global South, and the artificial urbanism of the oil states of the Arabian Gulf. Shopping malls, modern art museums, ever-higher skyscrapers, and urban megaprojects constitute the triumphal ‘Icon Project’ of global capitalism. On a hot, sunny day in January 2014, I was standing in a long, bustling queue for the Peak tram in Hong Kong. I started chatting with two bright young women, sisters from Guangzhou—formerly Canton, now the third-largest city in China with a population approaching 15 million. It is a short train ride from Hong Kong and sends many tourists there. My new acquaintances told me that their father was an architect, and that this was their first visit to Hong Kong, they wanted to see what the rest of the world was really like. Clearly they were excited by the prospect of visiting the famous Peak—I am not sure they were entirely prepared for the ‘Peak experience’ that starts with a dramatic entrance and culminates when you get to the top of a spectacular building.

Architecture, Cities, and Alternative Globalizations

Most architects and urban designers would work as creatively to provide a built environment fit for an alternative globalization as they currently do for the system of capitalist globalization. But questions about the role that architecture might play in creating alternative non-capitalist and non-consumerist forms of human settlements are of limited use with­out a larger vision of what alternatives are possible. If these large transformations are not possible within the framework of capitalist globalization, as I believe, then a new political project for change is necessary. While it is absurd to expect architects and urbanists to design their (and our) way out of capitalism and its many dysfunctions and contradictions, the emancipatory potential of successful, radical, non-capitalist examples should never be underestimated. I mean non-capitalist rather than post-capitalist, which implies that elements of capitalism linger on and, in my view, inevitably subvert progressive changes. This is obviously a very long-term project. In itself, this is not exclusively an architectural or design issue, but it does have architectural and design implications. As Oscar Niemeyer said in 1980: ‘I see now that a social architecture without a socialist base leads to nothing—that you can’t create a class- free oasis in a capitalist society, and that to try ends up being, as Engels said, a paternalistic pose that pretends to be revolutionary’ (quoted in Holston 1989: 93). There are many imaginative schemes to pedestrianize cities, to discourage the use of private cars, to deal with the lack of affordable decent housing in rich as well as poor countries. However, as long as the transnational capitalist class provides the framework for these initiatives they will always remain marginal. While acknowledging the power of the ‘just city’ literature (notably, Fainstein 2010; Harvey 2012; Sandercock 1997), I argue that challenging capitalism on its own ground is futile and that a radical disengagement with capitalist globalization offers the best prospect of escaping from the destructive consequences of class polarization and ecological unsustainability.

Architects as Professionals and Ideologues

The globalizing professionals and technical personnel that make up the professional fraction of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in architecture are a very mixed group, ranging from those who work with (or for) those who own and control the major architectural firms to those engaged in facilitating construction (Kennedy 2005; Ren 2011), the education of architects, designers in general, professional architectural entrepreneurs, historians, and critics. In chapter 2 the role of architects and their firms in the social production of iconicity was discussed (summarized in table 2.2). In this respect the professional fraction and the corporate fraction of the TCC clearly overlap. However, there are many other professionals in and around architecture and urban design whose relationship to the professional fraction of the TCC is more problematic, and they are the prime focus of this chapter. Of all the four fractions of the TCC, the professional fraction is the one in which we find most opposition to the globalizing agenda of contemporary capitalism and, in some cases, outright condemnation of consumerism and its effects on architecture and the city. There are frequent debates between globalizing professionals who enthusiastically support and practice the agenda of capitalist globalization and others who pursue their own, sometimes alternative agendas. These include engineers and consultants working with inexpensive and sustainable local materials and building methods, and teachers, historians, and critics who give them theoretical and practical support. There is no shortage of critical commentary on capitalism and consumer society from those on the politically progressive wings of contemporary developments in architecture and urban design, more or less leftist scholars. Proponents of Critical Regionalism in its several incarnations (Frampton 1985; Canizaro 2007; Lefaivre and Tzonis 2012) and those under the umbrella of vernacular architecture (Harris and Berke 1997) also provide some in­sights about what alternative globalizations in architecture and urban design could look like. Even some notable architects, considered members of the cultural establishment, have expressed radical ideas when in reflective mood (e.g., Rogers 1991).