Architecture and Status-Anxiety

A recent advertisement in El País 

Ever wondered why luxury products are advertised so heavily in mass-circulation media, even though the market for such products is only a small fraction of the readership? I have, and I think I've figured out why: It's because advertising for a luxury product is never intended to sell the object itself. Instead, what is being sold is the reassurance, through the very mass-advertisement of the brand, that its exclusivity will be recognized by the rest of us slobs.

Luxury advertising is thus aimed at rich and poor alike, albeit with two subtly different messages. To most of us, it says: "when you see this brand of car (or shoe or handbag or Swiss watch or whatever) that is well-beyond your reach, you must show respect and move your jalopy out of the fast lane, for its owner is well-above you in the capitalist pecking order, capito?!" while to the potential owner, it says: "when you buy this product, you are buying, above all, social status and respect through our brand's universal recognition. Our massive advertisement campaigns see to that."

It is thus mainly social status that the rich are buying through expensive luxury products; social status that is socially-engineered through the art of advertisement copy, which of course does not come cheap.

Architecture is also a conveyor of status. But artists' and architects' brands are never blatantly advertised in the mass media as such. That would be too crass. Instead, there is a whole slew of uncritical magazines and articles in Sunday supplements that, along with a slew of uncritical museums, 'advertise' art and architecture to the masses, making sure that we are capable of recognizing a Koons, a Gehry, or a Zaha when we see one (and behave accordingly).

In the above advertisement for a famous brand of German car, it is canonical architecture (Barcelona pavilion, albeit heavily photo-shopped) that is being used to confer status to a brand; status that is in turn available to those motorists who can afford it. And the job of the rest of us is to take careful note of that. Amen.