Two Types of Iconic Architecture

Abstract

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.