A Arquitectura do Espectáculo. Estetização e Despolitização da Arquitectura na Sociedade do Espectáculo

Abstract

What is architecture? What's architecture for? Who does architecture serve? And who should it serve? What purposes does it chase? And what purposes should it chase? It is in the demand to obtain answers to these, and other, questions that this dissertation is developed, presenting itself fundamentally as an observation of shifts in the architectural practice, as a reformulation of questions, as a reorganization of priorities and as a search of valid and relevant answers before the contemporary context. It's a reflection that tries to instigate a critical stance in the architectural discourse ... it's a reformulation of questions that deny, simultaneously, an acritical acceptance of revered or superficial answers that don't echo the true complexity and depth of contemporary society and architecture. Starting from Debord's observation that we live in a global society of the spectacle, a society drunk and depoliticized by the aesthetics, fascinated by image, by consumption and by the idea of progress, we find that behind all the scenography that "makeup" our world, behind the capitalist's self-glorification spectacle, the whims of some continue to overestimate themselves over the needs of many. Consequently, a careful consideration about the influence of such inverted world to the architecture and to our cities' development is mandatory. It's vital to reformulate the contemporary architecture's thought to avoid its total submission to the phenomenon of the world's aestheticization and depoliticization in the society of the spectacle. Only in such way it will be possible to begin a new path to the contemporary architecture, far from the iconology and political and social disengagement canons that define its present condition of "Architecture of the Spectacle". It's with this in mind that this study struggles for [a] 1[000] new architecture[s], for [a] 1[000] truly contemporary city[ies] that, permanently moving away from the present stardom and personal glorification empty regime, can redirect itself [themselves] in the search for a true progress and a true democracy.