DIGESTING DESIRES : A CRITICAL REVIEW ON THE ROLE OF IMAGES IN THE CONSUMPTION OF ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The meaning of “consumption” has shifted from being biological digestion of the end-products to the sensory absorption of almost anything. In mass-culture, travels for sights, views and places have naturalized into a form of “consumption”.

How do we consume architecture? Has the traditional concept of consumption become insignificant in the present day context? Is there a conventional contentment in how we consume architecture? Must architecture be consumed physically? Or can it be experienced in the form of pictorial illustrations? How do images manipulate our minds? Do constructed images depict the “desires” of architecture? Who ratifies the meaning of such “desire”? How does the symbolic meaning of desires get stereotyped in the consumer world? To what extent these desires are true? Is there a shift in the way we are presented with these stereotypes through imagery representations? How can images be given volumes in the consumer world?

This dissertation explores the issue of “consumption” in architecture through the production of images. It is not my intention to judge the morality of such trends but to focus on who constructs the meaning of such “desire” and how they do it. Thus this paper would analyse the ways images are managed and manipulated in order to render the meanings and “desires” of architecture. How issues like post-colonial politics of subject-making, the necessity of style and the process of subliminal seduction can be the basis of the consumption of the desire of architecture are examined, based on the images illustrated in the advertisements and brochures of Singapore condominiums. By investigating the symbolic meanings behind various imagery representations of the condominiums advertisements, the dissertation further explores if, with such consumerist forces at bay, what we intend to consume is what we eventually consume in reality.