iKonic ArKitecture
As someone who has worked in retail for years,
specifically in the visual department, my ultimate responsibility was to uphold
visual standards to enhance customer experience. It is no secret that “customer
experience” translates into “means by which to get a shopper to spend the most
money possible, and enjoy that experience so greatly, that they want to come
back and do it again”. Thus, the discussion about Tod’s in Tokyo, and the
outrageous expenses which go hand in hand with launching and running a Flagship
store, were no great surprise to me. Flagships are advertisements. They are
interactive billboards. They foster relationships, and I would be surprised if
any retailer depends on their flagship to carry the business of the company, or
even just support itself.
The great thing about capitalism in our globalized
world today is that shopping and the exchange of money for goods can be done in
a number of ways. But, before a consumer goes to buy something, they need to be
convinced it is something they want or need. This is the true purpose of a
flagship store – Marketing. In a sense it is the shallow, beautiful,
charismatic business partner whose charm and presence are undeniable.
…Which brings me to Kim Kardashian. (I know, I’m
sorry, but just keep reading). Kim Kardashian
is the perfect example of brilliant marketing, whose “professional purpose” is
to exist for public consumption of her brand, which translates into millions of
dollars being spent by the public to continue to “consume” her public persona.
She embodies two important ideas when it comes to iconicity today:
1) Celebrity
culture, along with competitive branding, is much more powerful than
architectural taste.
2) The decline of religion is a key
shift in the veneration of icons, but just as important is the decline in all
ideologies and shared public belief systems. “Weak belief” characterizes our
global culture. The consequence of weak belief today in art, as Arthur Danto
has argued, is that “anything can be art.” (Prospect article).
This obsession with celebrity culture goes hand in
hand with the decline of religion. As a community we have replaced one “belief
system” with another, and the side effect is that “…anything can be art” and
anyone can be a celebrity. Kim may have had a questionable start in the
celebrity realm, but she has been able to sustain it because she embraces the
capitalistic, global community we live in, she works the system, and has
subsequently made much more than a reasonable living off of it.
While at first glance I think most people would deny
Kim K. as an icon, what makes her any less of an icon than a theater or sports
stadium? All three are “entertainment”, all three generate money, and all three
have specifically and carefully crafted exteriors.
I guess this leads me to two questions – Similar to
Eileen’s thoughts, is the ability of an establishment to generate funds a new
standard for iconicity, however shallow and perverse that may be? Have we
become so secular, and capitalist now that anyone can claim anything “iconic”
(with the right marketing) or vice versa, no one can claim anything futuristically as
iconic because the era of meaning and value outside of monetary value, has
passed?
It makes me think of the SNL sketch with the Kim &
Kanye talk show. Jay Pharaoh, who plays Kanye, spends the entire “show”
praising Kim for being a genius, being ahead of her time. Imagine that is true
–Maybe Kim is the icon of the future. Americans have always held people who
worked hard and made something of themselves in high esteem (rags to riches stories). What if the next
incarnation of that is not necessarily hard-working people, but well-marketed,
money-generating people? I mean, isn’t that basically where we are at right now
with architecture? Are we already rewarding the Kim Kardashian’s of architecture
with the label of iconic? Have we moved into a new era of iconic which is
dependent upon how that specific thing contributes to the capitalist global
community?
Maybe
Kanye is onto something…
No comments:
Post a Comment