The condition of publicity
(and its effects on architecture) (2005)
The following is a presentation text for a lecture given by Mark Pimlott at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) in Rotterdam on 8 April.
artdesigncafé | Creative Business & Entrepreneurship | Published 01 August 2010.
This text served as the basis for Pimlott’s "The continuous interior: Infrastructure for publicity and control" in Harvard Design Magazine (Fall/Winter 2008/2009).
"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of their communication."
—Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967.
The object of architects becoming involved with the media would seem to turn initially on the aspect of visibility. Visibility begets attention, attention begets discussion, discussion begets notoriety, perhaps work. Work begets visibility and so on, in what appears to be a natural cycle. The tradition of architects’ visibility is simple: trained as professionals, armed with the authority of their specialised knowledge, architects acquire work through both their contacts and the skills they demonstrate in making buildings. Built work gradually ensures wider circles of attention for their practises, and correspondingly more work, increasing in volume and in complexity as a reflection of their growing contacts and expertise. This tradition certainly is broadly true for the majority of architects. There are others, more intellectually inclined, perhaps, whose ambitions lay in having more direct impact on the environment: one could describe this as almost political ambition. The connections have to be pursued more aggressively, the level of achievement is set higher, the cultural pretensions of the work are similarly high. In the past, quite often such architects became the heads of academies (Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer) in order to be part of the political system, to be closer to the nexus of decisive political power. Another route to visibility for the ambitious architect was the radical group, the exhibition, the competition scheme, the private publication, the manifesto (Le Corbusier, Mies)––the building as a means was not always available to such architects, whose connections to or influence over private individuals or corporations willing to spend money on building, were very often limited. The majority of the acknowledged masters of Modern architecture (in Europe, in any case) and members of the avant-garde had these "qualifications" in common, forming a tradition of their own and providing a template for future generations of architects with ambition. It is worth noting that these architects were referred to by public and profession alike as "masters". It is worth noting also that this tradition is still very much in place today: there are architects sustained by their directorships of academies, and architects who survive on the basis of hypothetical projections. The publicity value in each lies with outmoded perceptions of the authority of academic work and the artistic honesty of "independent creative research".
In the professional milieu, publicity has a rather more pragmatic role to play. All architects need business in order to survive, and it is widely acknowledged that advertising is one route to business. An old-fashioned route is word-of-mouth, which hails from an age when decisions regarding commissions were often made through advice offered in the gentlemen’s club. This is, as it always has been, a means with limited prospects of success. Those who have followed the lead of the avant-garde continue to regard publishing as a viable route to commissions: increased visibility in the architecture and design press, mostly directed at other colleagues, is intended to attract the attention of those colleagues and students. This, too, can lead to work. Better still would be exposure in the non-professional press, such as newspapers; or even better, popular magazines devoted to design or "lifestyle". All of this type of exposure requires some hustling on the part of the architect or someone pushy in the architect’s office: phone calls, lunches, informal meetings, chats at openings; and until only a few years ago, the preparation and provision of project descriptions and medium—to large—format transparencies, as well as plans, sections and elevations of buildings drawn especially for reproduction. This remains a simple route for simple exposure. However, it does not meet the needs of effective publicity.
Publicity & Architecture, page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
—Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, 1967.
Contemporary architecture and media
The past few years have seen a notable increase in the production and projection of architecture that is indebted to the processes and appearances of publicity. The existence of architecture so oriented is not particularly new. One can trace a fairly straightforward history of this phenomenon back to the end of the eighteenth century and the emergence of the modern public. It becomes a prominent characteristic of commercial and public architecture, for example, in the forms of the arcade, the department store and the exhibition building, throughout the nineteenth century. The sense that there is now much more architecture indebted to, dependent on, in the thrall of, or strongly related to publicity is in no doubt partly due to the pervasive nature of contemporary media. There are myriad leaflets, newspapers, journals, magazines, radio and television broadcasts, internet sites and message services all issuing factual, fictional and speculative "information" on an encyclopædic range of topics twenty-four hours a day, worldwide. There seems to be an ever-present welter of material being produced and disseminated without cease, and a correspondingly growing audience to consume it. Rather than dwelling upon the cliché of an "information overload" (pages can be left unturned and all receiving equipment can be mercifully turned off), one should regard omnipresent media output as a fact.The object of architects becoming involved with the media would seem to turn initially on the aspect of visibility. Visibility begets attention, attention begets discussion, discussion begets notoriety, perhaps work. Work begets visibility and so on, in what appears to be a natural cycle. The tradition of architects’ visibility is simple: trained as professionals, armed with the authority of their specialised knowledge, architects acquire work through both their contacts and the skills they demonstrate in making buildings. Built work gradually ensures wider circles of attention for their practises, and correspondingly more work, increasing in volume and in complexity as a reflection of their growing contacts and expertise. This tradition certainly is broadly true for the majority of architects. There are others, more intellectually inclined, perhaps, whose ambitions lay in having more direct impact on the environment: one could describe this as almost political ambition. The connections have to be pursued more aggressively, the level of achievement is set higher, the cultural pretensions of the work are similarly high. In the past, quite often such architects became the heads of academies (Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer) in order to be part of the political system, to be closer to the nexus of decisive political power. Another route to visibility for the ambitious architect was the radical group, the exhibition, the competition scheme, the private publication, the manifesto (Le Corbusier, Mies)––the building as a means was not always available to such architects, whose connections to or influence over private individuals or corporations willing to spend money on building, were very often limited. The majority of the acknowledged masters of Modern architecture (in Europe, in any case) and members of the avant-garde had these "qualifications" in common, forming a tradition of their own and providing a template for future generations of architects with ambition. It is worth noting that these architects were referred to by public and profession alike as "masters". It is worth noting also that this tradition is still very much in place today: there are architects sustained by their directorships of academies, and architects who survive on the basis of hypothetical projections. The publicity value in each lies with outmoded perceptions of the authority of academic work and the artistic honesty of "independent creative research".
In the professional milieu, publicity has a rather more pragmatic role to play. All architects need business in order to survive, and it is widely acknowledged that advertising is one route to business. An old-fashioned route is word-of-mouth, which hails from an age when decisions regarding commissions were often made through advice offered in the gentlemen’s club. This is, as it always has been, a means with limited prospects of success. Those who have followed the lead of the avant-garde continue to regard publishing as a viable route to commissions: increased visibility in the architecture and design press, mostly directed at other colleagues, is intended to attract the attention of those colleagues and students. This, too, can lead to work. Better still would be exposure in the non-professional press, such as newspapers; or even better, popular magazines devoted to design or "lifestyle". All of this type of exposure requires some hustling on the part of the architect or someone pushy in the architect’s office: phone calls, lunches, informal meetings, chats at openings; and until only a few years ago, the preparation and provision of project descriptions and medium—to large—format transparencies, as well as plans, sections and elevations of buildings drawn especially for reproduction. This remains a simple route for simple exposure. However, it does not meet the needs of effective publicity.
Publicity & Architecture, page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
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