Image Making as Urban Practice
Considering the city as the network within which social life exists and
flows; its image is created through the social actions and the
production of physical environment. People’s means of interaction and
communication have been changed from words to images (Postman, 1985). In
such a society, urban growth and image making become simultaneous.
Stephens (1998), on the other hand, considers word as the predominant
means of mental transport that was replaced with image. As McGowan
(2004) interprets a shift in the emphasis on the symbolic order towards
the imaginary that occurs in correspondence with the alternation of
primacy from word to image. By this emphasis on the image, architecture
had faced transformations. As Tafuri indicates in his book ‘Architecture
and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development’, “the proposals of the
new urban ideology may be summed up as follows: architectural and super
technological utopianism ; … prophecies of ”aesthetic
societies”; and invitations to institute a championship of the
imagination” (Tafuri, 1976: 139). As the imaginary and
empowerment of the image become fundamental in consumer culture,
contemporary architecture becomes formal and more about aesthetics. In
other words, architecture becomes a player in the process of image
making within urban context; as seen in many contemporary metropolises.
Cunningham (2005) draws on Tafuri by growing what he saw as the
irretrievable descend in its socially transformative desires towards a
‘form without utopia to that of sublime uselessness’; and such
uselessness has been massively in ideological use by the contemporary
essentials of capital accumulation. Cunningham continues by calling the
current drama of architecture as one of ‘spectacle andbrand image’ . Architecture cannot prevail over such
relationships, but it can endorse a coherent consciousness of their
conditions and promote a new understanding of what they produce as new
forms of subjective experience .
The making of image is essential to sustaining the spectacle. However,
production of space takes the form of image. Looking into Lefebvre,
capitalist mode of production preserves itself through the production of
space while urbanization is the primary extension of capitalism
(Lefebvre, 1991). Thus, the image making by means of production of
spaces in an urban scale becomes an urban practice to sustain the
spectacle. As Debored (1992) describes, this is a society that is
fundamentally based on the spectacle, which is the endless and perfect
image of the dominant economic order; spectacle’s only purpose is to
develop itself . On the other hand, he declares that spectacle is
a social relationship between people, rather than being a collection of
images; but this relationship is mediated by images. Thus, spatial logic
of contemporary representations of the world incorporates with
production of image; the new mediators and means of communication. So,
mediation of those images through production of spaces presents a form
of spectacle. The importance of spatial production in the contemporary
time makes the spatial changes significant in the course of
transformation in the image of the city. As Jameson (1984b) discusses,
modern social formation is radically transformed and it has manifested
the epochal transference from temporal to spatial. This transference is
the cause of a new spatial logic of the world. Thus the urban practice
becomes a cycle within which image is produced and spectacle is
preserved. This indicates that contemporary society utilizes spaces in
the city as mediators to experience spectacle. Cities like Dubai,
London, Sydney and many other metropolises promoted spaces embodying
festivity, leisure and entertainment as a part of the spectacle.