Architecture and the Image at the Turn of the 21st Century After Visibility Routledge Research in Architecture Series

This book examines architecture, image, and media relationships as productive for architecture and architectural discourses. By arguing that the relationships between architecture and media cannot be dismissed via linear criticism of architecture and media or image, these relations are instead seen as a part of a sphere (a mediasphere) of complex relationships. In lieu of anything like a consensus on the contemporary condition of architecture (referring to the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries), the starting point of this book is that the relationships between architecture, media, and images continue to multiply, owing to continuous technological advancements.

Contemporary architecture considered in this book is related to the selected circumstances of high visibility, where architectural images are propelled into visibility and conflated with non-architectural images. This takes architecture outside of architectural-only discourse and into the public realm. By granting higher visibility to both the architectural images and architecture in the public realm, architecture can also be influenced by the various perceptions of the general public and can enter public consciousness via non-architectural media. With increased visibility, architecture?s far-reaching presence calls for more structured analysis of its nature and potential. As the analysed architecture in this book is associated with the discourses outside of architecture (some of which relate to terrorism, natural disaster, and branding and consumption), the limits of contemporary architectural discipline are questioned and extended.

This book is written for academics and students in architectural history, theory, and criticism, particularly those interested in visual and media studies.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Histories and Theories; Architecture in Iconomy and Translation

1 Image and the Media in the Work of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard

2 The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as a Historical Precedent, and the Museum after the “Bilbao Effect”

3 After 9/11: Considering Media Images and Skyscraper Architecture

Part II: Contemporary Tendencies: Architecture in Iconomy

4 The Image of the Hurricane Katrina and the Rebuilding of New Orleans

5 Image, Fashion and Architecture: The Case of Prada

Conclusion

After Visibility: Moving Forward

Bibliography

Index

Sanja Rodeš is Lecturer in Architecture at Deakin University in Australia. Her research focuses on the complexity of the relationships between architecture, image, and media in the twenty‑first century. She has published in the same field, and is an external editor and contributor to Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns (eds.), The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture 1960–2015 (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).