How Visual Culture Affects Contemporary Architecture

The contemporary culture is a global social effect which is derived fromthe economy of America. The visual culture emerged from the background ofthe today's consumer culture, which absolutely affect the whole society,including various layers like the aesthetic life, the visualized social culture andthe symbolic consumer culture. All of these impress great changes on thearchitecture, which is a highly interdisciplinary field and a field of "the nearestart to the economy".In this dissertation, a detailed introduction of visual culture collect themain fields of several layers in its history, which introduces the three parts inthe visual culture: the culture of visual existence, the culture of the behavior ofeyes, and the visualized culture. Visual culture including three features: thefocus on visual technique, the popular aesthetics in mass society and the tieconnection with consumption. All of which are effecting the contemporaryarchitecture today.First of all, the media technique influence architecture design progress, sothe development of visual culture take great evolution both into people's lifeand the architecture design. Secondly, the great power of the beautification ofdaily life make architecture have to focus on the popular phenomenon: one sideis that the design tools changes architecture, the other side is that thesynchronously effected culture changes it. Thirdly the consumer culture needvisualized images and symbols, the peak of the stimulation from theconsumption contributes to "The Society of Spectacle", which directly pusharchitecture into the competition of "spectacle" instead of the original"aesthetic" coming from the modernism.The great change of today's culture has maken the whole disciplineswitches to the field of new age -the information age. As to the Chinesearchitects, they need to join in it with criticism.