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In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the modern artists liberate the form,
subordinating representation to it. As formulated by French artist Maurice Denis in
1890, a picture...before being a battle, a horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote - is
essentially a plane surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order. With
form consciously understood as a kernel of an image responsible its visual, cognitive,
semiotic, communicative and emotional effects, it now can be deployed to act as a new
mechanism of symbolization.
Form as symbol. Example: diagonal composition. El Lissitzky (Russia). A Tale about Two Squares. 1919.
Form as symbol. Example: photomontage. Georg Grosz & John Heartfield Life
and Work in a Universal City 1919.
Form as a symbol. Example: city photomontages. Boris Belinsky (Russia). Metropolis. Photomontage. 1923.
the common references of the business world are transfered to a society as a whole
"contemporary society / "contemporary lifestyle":
dynamic / flexible / adoptable /
innovation
mobility
network
hi-tech
global
multi-cultural (which often is used as a way to convey the concept "global")
horizontal (meaning: the opposite to "hierarchical"),
user-reconfigurable (meaning: rather than selling you a finished object/content/
message, we put forward a platform for the users to create, collaborate, and share),
"harmonious with/friendly towards/like environment/nature.")
Zaha Hadid (London). Abu Dhabi Performance Arts Center. UAE. 2007 ongoing.
Bilbao effect: city branding. Foster + Partners (London) have released designs
for the biggest building ever built: Crystal Island in Moscow will be 450m high,
cover an area of almost half a million square metres and contain a total floor
area of 2.5 million square metres.
Bilbao effect 10 years: from one building by star architect to a whole museum
island.
January 2007: Architects Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando and Zaha
Hadid have designed cultural buildings for Saadiyat Island, which lies off the
shore of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Images: Louvre Abu Dhabi by architect Jean Nouvel. 2007 - ongoing
Branding and symbolism. If modernists artists aimed to symbolize the same set of references (speed, dynamism,
construction), today designers and architects are often hired to establish unique images for different brands, cities,
hotels, etc. And creation of unique forms has become one effective way of doing it.
Brandscaping.
Image: Rem Koolhaus (OMA, Rotterdam). Prada Epicenter. Los Angeles. 2004.
world-class architects who designed shops for globally recognized brands (as of 2005 - more since then):
Rem Koolhaas and OMA (Prada, New York, Beverly Hills, and San Francisco); Frank Gehry (Miyake Tribeca,
New York); Herzog & De Meuron (Prada, Tokyo); Tadao Ando (Armani Teatro, Milan); Renzo Piano (Herms
Ginza, Tokyo); Future Systems (Selfridges, Birmingham); Richard Gluckman (Helmut Lang, Paris, Milan, and
New York); and John Pawson (Calvin Klein, Paris).