The Mythology Of Architecture In Consumer Society

The pluralistic phenomena of theory and practice in contemporary architecture field and the fickle emotion in the design environment have aroused many scholars’ extensive attention and in depth research, but the perspectives or starting points of many researches are restricted to the architecture field and people hold a unilateral negative or critical attitude towards various drawbacks caused by the fickle emotion, but in fact, there are also extremely similar reflections in other production fields as the phenomena and problems appear in contemporary architecture field, and these phenomena are common for all production fields under the contemporary social environment.Aiming at the preceding problems, the thesis considers architecture as a social product that is directly influenced by social production mode and social relations, and explains contemporary architecture phenomenon from the point of commodity transaction with contemporary consumption society as the background. Taking Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard’s mythology as the theoretical basis, it discusses the nature of mythology from three aspects, namely the forming steps of myth, the construction approach of myth and myth’s hosting the social function, which are respectively applied to the research of construction field:The forming of architecture myth went through three steps of functionalization, popularization and hierarchization. The functional steps are illustrated from the three aspects:releasing from the symbolic form, removing the element of the symbolic decoration and seeking the economy of architecture; The steps of popularization can be illustrated from three aspects:restoring the public spirit attribution, advocating public concerns, and participating in and paying attention to the commercial promotion of architectures; the classification step is explained from the two aspects of dividing the construction class by the architectural award and matching the right class with the construction class.The reason that why architectural myth can complete the three preceding steps lies is its special construction techniques. Interpret the essential influence of the construction of mythological buildings on the contemporary building field by analyzing the three transaction levels of the construction of mythological buildings--the transaction level of mass media, the transaction level of popular culture and the transaction level of sign value as well as the final presentation form of the mythological buildings after being constructed—brand code.The result of mythologizing architecture is to bear the social operation, so it also needs to be tested by the society before a building finally becoming a myth. The carrier of social functioning of architecture myth includes three aspects, which are the cultural turning into economic benefits, power demands of consumers and cultural identifications of power status. The author has given the interpretation of three aspects while taking examples such as the reconstruction project of Potsdamer Platz and the urban redevelopment project of RoppongiHill.This thesis comes to the conclusion that the mythologizing of architecture in the consumer society is inevitable. In the era of economic globalization, Chinese contemporary architecture is inevitably impacted by the society of consumer, showing a mythical characteristic to a certain degree; therefore, this paper will be of some reference value to understanding Chinese contemporary architecture.