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Architectural Strategies and Globalizatio

  • Publish On 11 January 2017
  • Christophe Le Gac

The avant-gardes tended to disappear as their impact on architectural production increased. Becoming progressively more visible, the mutual forces of attraction that exist between economy (marketing), creation (contemporary art) and architecture give rise to a particular aesthetic, as much on the level of construction as on that of the positions adopted. Architects today explore little known territories, where the aesthetic emerges from an action strategy. Notions of the “world-society,” of “cognitive capitalism” call upon the idea of economic warfare. Faced with this state of affairs, the actors of architecture have the responsibility of imagining schemes with the purpose of retaining their singularity.

Born in 1969, Christophe Le Gac is an architect, an art, architecture and cinema critic, and a curator. He teaches at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts TALM (Tours-Angers-Le Mans).

“The worst is never assured, the best, never consented to. This is a good reason to act!”
André Comte-Sponville

“Dare to be oneself, to embrace the degree of power that dwells within us, to say yes to the forces inside us, to create freedom, to consent to the force of destiny, to love necessity, to live and dance, to live and to exult.”
Michel Onfray (after F. W. Nietzsche)

Globalization, accompanied by ideas like “world society,” the elasticity of the world and “cognitive capitalism” evoking the idea of an economic war, is rarely thought of with regard to architectural creation, because, faced with this phenomenon, the actors of this architecture are responsible for imagining schemes with the purpose of retaining their singularity. What is behind this omnipresent globalization? Is it possible to draw positive energy and operational concepts from architecture? The hijacking of “weapons” such as “economic intelligence” and “creative destruction” in the architectural sphere is to be considered pragmatically and symbolically. Like independent cinema, “auteur architecture” is to be valued by its producers as much as by its creators. Let us look at what it is in more detail.

IAC Headquarters, New York, 2007 © Frank Gehry
Benisch & Partners  © avant "Benisch & Partners"
"On the Edges of Paradise", 2005, © Laurence Bonvin
Façade indéterminée pour Best, Houston, Texas, 1974 © SITE
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 1997 © Frank Gehry
OMA / Rem Koolhass, siège CCTV, Pékin, 2007 © OMA
Sharp Design Center, Toronto © Sharp Design Center, Toronto

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