A Study On The Media Of Architectural Skin In The Context Of Consumer Culture

For the construction, the surface can protect the structure and enclose the space. But from another perspective, it also can pass on culture. The independence of the surface, it changes the relationship of the form and surface. From the competition of design, the surface is wonderful made by architecture.In spite of many factors leading to the transformation of the surface design concepts, the consumerism values which emerged after the 20th century and gradually became the global dominant culture are significant. In a competitive marketplace each product wants to win in the competition and capture consumers’ attention in order to make considerable profit by stimulating consumption. The prevalence of consumer culture, combined with the impetus of media, makes it possible to transform a consumer society into "a society judging people by their appearance". Such trend, in the architecture field, also makes the development of architectural forms diversified. Now under the impact of consumer culture a lot of modern art, including architecture, one of the forms which have a close connection with economy, cannot avoid being influenced by commercialization. Architecture has been viewed as commodities. Meanwhile, it is reasonable that the surface of architecture which attracts the public becomes a part of construction spending in this era.Based on the theories of consumer culture, this paper emphasizes the changes of lifestyles influenced by consumer culture; from the perceptions of thought origins, material basis and market conditions from which consumer culture arose, this paper gains insight into the basis of these theories, and thus exploring the effect of consumer culture upon the surface of architecture. And by interpreting "the dream of consumption" in the theories of consumer culture, this paper analyses the media characteristics of contemporary architecture surface. The discipline of architecture has experienced thousands years of development, and it cannot be defined and interpreted by a single theory and style. Now "eyeball economy" and "attention economy" are widely-discussed topics. In this inevitable cultural phenomenon, how to find new opportunities for development in practice is the question we are facing. In the end, this paper proposes design principles on the trend of architecture skin.