Glam architecture for desiring-machines
Date
2014
Authors
Mical, T.
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Journal article
Citation
Dialectic II Architecture, 2014; 2:77-88
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Abstract
This essay examines the situation of select recent high end fashion architecture in Tokyo, as a means of owning a wider discussion on the function of fashion in architectural thinking. With particular emphasis upon the resurgence of hyper modern minimalism as a form of glamour in the accelerated boom-and-bust cycles of building production, this essay also initiates a mapping of desire, commodification, and subtle permutations of style into the analysis of architectural production. This essay examines modes of fashioning the infra-thin surfaces of select 1990s glamorous retail architecture, specifically works by Ito, Aoki, and Sejima, in Tokyo. The specific consumption model of appearance (of sleek surfaces tending towards commodification or spectacle) is often in tension with the forms of emergence of individual style – in architecture as the interplay of sensuality, the imaginary, and desire. The high retail showcases of Dior, Vuitton, and others will be shown to push Benjamin's claims for the bipolar existence of architecture (as custom and image) fashioned in their skins towards unity. The architectural propositions and material decisions create a seamless continuity through the collapse of 20th Century department store spatial tactics into enthralling 21st Century diagrammatic surface effects. This conceptual mapping of glam architecture then introduces the subtle analytical model of desiring-machines. This paper will seek to contextualize the flattening of these historical processes within the infra-thin engineered surfaces of iconic neo-minimalist buildings, in complex relation to an austerity impulse.