The Carnival Of Pictures: Urban And Architecture Design In The Era Of Image World

In the situation of post-modernism, together with the development of mass media, visual culture appears. And the era of reading image is coming, which changed basic definition system of image itself and social relationships behind. As a visual symbol, image has been turned into the resource and media which could be conducted directly, thus its amount increases and visual appreciation becomes popular. Mass culture is the leading force of social lives. The symbolic meaning and value of image get involved into everdaylife and influence the design of city and architecture.The direct sense of image and mass media make it easy to experience, conceive and image city and architecture based on the system of image symbol. Difference between reality and imagination disappears. Visual change of city and architecture becomes the value and direction of design. And thereafter, city and architecture are proved to be the futher media for dissemination of vision symbol.The urban design in the era of reading image is also set on the exchage value of symols, and therefore forms differermt city space and image. Moreover, the intervention of mass culture and digital technology make architecture a more convenient media and step up production of architecture in the process of meaning reproduction.Meanwhile, it is worthwhile to note that all discussion can hardly do without the comsumption society when talking about the material property of city and architecture. On the one hand, the urban and architectural space has been produced into products; on the other hand, as the symbol of image, they become public resources of specialty in the golablization process. In this situation, the producing of image meaning has been trapped into consumption logic and has become the exchange value in design prcess; therefore lose the function of self criticism and derivative. The appearance of urban and architectural is not the result of useful function, but also the representation of visual consumption.With more than 100,000 words, this paper is divded into 6 chapters, trying to explain that in the era of reading image, as the place for living and the product for consuming, city and architecture are developing toward the symbolic meaning of image. The design of them becomes the best public resource and the ideal tool to create local specialty in globalization. As a result, this study attempts to find out a way to return to design of local sense, and is related with urban and architectural practices of 2010 Expo Shanghai.