Objects, images and in betweens

This thesis is an exploration of the commodification of architecture, where the matter of a building has been reduced to the status of an object, and an exploration of the neglected space that lies between such objects. This is most often seen in the architecture of speculative development, and is symptomatic of how architecture has been treated by its close association with the market economy. The prevailing mode of the construction industry is one of economy, and the capitalist system in which architecture works now demands revenue. This has resulted in the need to drive ‘newness’, an almost inbuilt obsolescence created from the need to sell new buildings, resulting in an unchecked process of generative form1. Adam Caruso decries what he calls ‘The Tyranny of The New’, the condition of novelty that undermines the cultural continuity of architecture. The ever changing form of the architecture of late capitalism has been driven by the market’s demand to exaggerate the obsolescence of existing structures. Newness and expansion are driven by the needs of the market to sell floor space. Such buildings are usually insular, acting as singular objects which rely purely on image. They are framed by the spaces between them, spaces which are neglected by the objects‘ lack of engagement with the outside world. Their architectural qualities are purely image, in keeping with the requirement for novelty. The profession of architecture now seems to bow unequivocally to economic demand. Commercial projects most often rely on a formalism, the qualities of which are primarily visual, and applied after the fact as a ‘compensatory facade’2, according to Kenneth Frampton. This is an image applied to a building simply to put a friendly face on the universalist system of architectural objects, which are predicated entirely on production. The economy of means present in such projects renders any other qualities of the architecture as distantly secondary.