BRANDING ROME©
A seeming identity through icons
We should not therefore be wondering if we really
perceive a world – we should say: the world is what we perceive.
In more general terms, we should not wonder if the evidence we have
is the truth or if, out of a defect in our spirit, what is evident
for us would not then be illusory with regard to some truth in itself.
Indeed, if we speak of “illusion”, it is because we have
recognised illusions, and we have been able to do so only in the name
of some perception which has emerged as true. The doubt and fear of
deluding ourselves thus confirms our power to reveal the error and
cannot therefore detach us from the truth.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Intro: the urban icon as a vector of global
identity.
This study examines the transformations that involve the contemporary
city and its identity, with a particular focus on places characterised
by a very powerful image. The city of Rome, the hugely iconic and
representative city in the global imagination, is analysed as a particular
case.
1 The European identity
Starting from the premise that identity is a concept in crisis, or
rather undergoing considerable transformation, especially in Europe
where the new Community has brought about a crisis in national identities,
this examination has focused on the city of Rome, which is highly
symbolic in terms of its historical and cultural importance in the
formation of Europe, in order to identify the main forms of transformation
of its identity between Europe and globalisation.
“To the extent that identity is derived from physical substance,
from the historical, from context, from the real, we somehow cannot
imagine that anything contemporary - made by us - contributes to it
(...) Identity conceived as this form of sharing the past is a losing
proposition: not only is there - in a stable model of continuous population
expansion - proportionally less and less to share, but history also
has an invidious half-life - as it is more abused, it becomes less
significant - to the point where its diminishing handouts become insulting
(...) Identity becomes like a lighthouse - fixed, overdetermined:
it can change its position or the pattern it emits only at the cost
of destabilizing navigation.” (1)
“Europe is destined to become a sort of mass-tourism machine
for the world Its vocation is to represent culture. And it is yet
another reason to celebrate what is contemporary. Because this role
as a world tourist centre will clearly become more topical and more
decisive for our appreciation of the historic city and its uses”
(2)
True to these assertions by Rem Koolhaas, Europe seems destined to
safeguard and sell its image as a culture-continent, or rather as
the cradle of the history of humanity. European cities and their artistic
attractions export culture and are themselves a cultural heritage,
like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and its container, the Louvre.
And Rome certainly plays a leading role among the various European
capitals. But what is identity in an increasingly globalised world?
2 Identity through icons
To give an idea of contemporary identity, in an architectural or city-science
study, reference has been made to icons, or rather to those very well-known
places (to a greater or lesser extent historical) by which the city
is known in the world.
Icons today are not just mass-tourist destinations but, as a result
of the spread of tourism, they are also the places that most concentrate
the so-called phenomenon of globalisation. This is why it is believed
that they form the hottest points in the city in an analysis of how
identity is manifested in these cities.
This approach, which considers not only architectural but also perceptive,
sociological and communication factors, must necessarily bear in mind
the substantial changes that have been brought about in contemporary
society by the growing importance of the world of the media, partly
as a result of the rapid development of new technologies. This is
a phenomenon that had been foreseen right from the sixties by a number
of important scholars (by two semiotics scholars like Roland Barthes
and Umberto Eco, by the true great scholar of the mass media, Marshall
McLuhan, and then by other illustrious thinkers who have examined
the media, such as Karl Popper, Jean Baudrillard or such urbanist-thinkers
as Paul Virilio). Three main phenomena illustrate the rapid growth
of the importance of the media in society:
- The secularisation of Western countries and the consequent loss
of ideologies is being replaced by the mythicization of new forms
of “worldly creeds” such as the cinema or television
- The massification of culture and an opening up to diversity and
the so-called cultural “melting pot” – the first
phenomenon of cultural globalisation – of which Pop culture
is the most sensational form
- The formidable progress of technologies (especially those relating
to communication, television and personal computers) and thus to their
widespread use
It is precisely with the defeat of the ideologies (the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War) that the concept of identity
– especially national – began to lose its meaning.
“National borders and time zones have outlived their historic
function, and are no more than barriers to any form of interchange.”
(3)
On the contrary, with the loss of national identity, the identity
of the city begins to acquire strength, accompanied by the city’s
constant economic and demographic development and growth, and thus
by a “spectacle-isation” transformation of its image.
“The development of the spectacle-isation of place stems from
the general cultural shift in western societies from ‘land’
to ‘landscape’, as places are transformed from sites of
labour (of agriculture, mining and manufacturing) into sites of visual
consumption. That shift occurred over the past two centuries but is
given a strong extra twist with the recent globalising of the significance
of visual consumption and the increased reflexivity that cities have
about their ‘place’ in the global order and how to enhance
it in part through design or re-design.” (4)
3 The European city: icons of history for “contemporary
appetites”
The “Old Continent” of Europe has a large number of historic
cities that are part of the history of the world and that increasingly
belong to an international identity. They are the emblem of the many
Europes and the many civilisations that have built them. Now that
that age has ended, they basically represent the wealth of their cultural
diversities.
“Europe should insist on the richness of its persistent diversity…
Instead of national identity usurped by Euro-bureaucracy, the ‘European’
should be presented as an extended identity, additional space that
enables each culture to reinvent itself in a new framework.”
(5)
These historic cities are themselves icons in the world and today
have increasingly become destinations of a complex form of tourism
that involves not only the holiday market but is also part of a system
of widespread mobility that has invaded the work sector and that,
above all, makes the tourist the ideal inhabitants of these spectacle-cities.
In a case like Rome it is extremely interesting to see how such a
deep-rooted image, and thus a very strong identity, now appear to
belong more to a global than to a local identity. The title –
the “Branding Rome” – sums up the concept of how
the city is fully part of our consumer world and how basically there
is a mutual interest in making Rome and the various brands allies.
4 The problem of landmarks: not just as object but
as urban
“A specter is haunting the global village – the specter
of the iconic building. In the last ten years a new type of architecture
has emerged. Driven by social forces, the demand for instant fame
and economic growth, the expressive landmark has challenged the previous
tradition of the architectural monument.” (6)
The iconic building, or rather the urban landmark, has become a new,
undisputed phenomenon in the so-called star system and thus also in
the culture of architecture. It has replaced the old churches and
the old municipal clock towers, adapting to the needs of the contemporary
market and its new values (communication and the media). The series
of museums built in the years around the dawn of the third millennium
(of which Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim is the most famous and celebrated,
but those in Barcelona, Berlin, Helsinki, Graz, London, Paris, Madrid
and Rome cannot be neglected) bear witness to this. But also the super-skyscraper
office blocks (from Barcelona to London and Vienna), the railway stations
(Lyon, Lille), congress centres (Lille, Rome), auditoriums (Rome,
Oporto), bridges (Seville, Rotterdam) and some shopping malls (Birmingham).
In other words architecture has become “iconised”, exalting
its presence as an aesthetic object and an “absolute container”
of the architectural programme.
This new trend in architecture has created a considerable disunity
in its relationship with the city, or rather with urbanity, since
these objects are deliberately made to conflict with the fabric of
buildings. Public space (icon-buildings are often used for public
services) has been pushed out of the container, creating a clean break
between the container and the neighbouring area. This has led to the
new phenomenon of a split-level public space – a traditional
level of streets and squares, and one filtered by access.
This phenomenon has led to new attention and has radically changed
the meaning of public space, particularly around these great iconic
buildings. This change has affected the entire city, and this inevitably
includes its historic icons (as in the case of Rome). Historic and
artistic marvels and buildings have become centres of attraction,
and are themselves new urban icons. A new city (of tourism, business,
trade and entertainment) has developed around its icons, exploiting
the potential they have for attracting people. This study has therefore
also examined what really happens in this new super-city, represented
by its icons. Where the city has been consolidated in its image, the
parameters used to analyse the icons have paradoxically changed. In
other words, the consolidated image attracts a continuous movement
and continuous flows, almost suggesting transformations that in actual
fact are no more than temporary.
“Where space was considered permanent, it now feels transitory
– on its way to becoming. The words and ideas of architecture,
once the official language of space, no longer seem capable of describing
this proliferation of new conditions.” (7)
5 Seeming city: beyond the physical fact
“The neo-theatrical city is the city in the era of trascendental
tourism, tourism as one of the basic forms of our existence (…)
the neo-theatricality of historical urban areas (is) an intersection
of activity and leisure in the quiet of the post-urban zone, an outdoor-café
culture and the reconstruction of historical areas turn the city into
a theme park.”
(…)
“The theme park seems to be the urban paradigm and the atrium
the architectural paradigm for the city of today, the city as an experience
machine, a territory for tourists and day-trippers, a stage set for
leisure and consumption in such dreams images, one feels an uncanny
affinity between Utopia and the artificial consumer paradise.”
(8)
In a society fundamentally based on mobility, networks, the dynamic
nature of situations and on its own mediatisation, the static city
no longer manages to reflect its own times. On the contrary, perception
of the city and its rapid utilisation becomes extremely relevant,
while it loses importance as a physical place. The city thus acquires
other super-structural meanings (historical, cultural, media) which
are precisely those that are examined in this study. Its history,
culture and image have thus become crucial data that act as the driving
forces for new economic markets. The city sells itself and does so
by means of its mythicisation or through the particular opportunities
it offers. Its identity coincides with marketing in the same way that
the image of the city is created, recreated or safeguarded.
“From Grand Tour to the present, whether motivated by a scientific
search for knowledge, colonizing ambitions, romantic desires, or other
impulses, architect-tourists have both reflected the world view of
their time and literally constructed it” (9)
Tourism, mobility and constantly changing images affect society more
than anything else. Urbanity and its related sciences give more importance
to phenomena that affect the city than to its design. The city has
a greater effect in terms of its perception than in its stasis, for
it adapts its image to the increasingly rapid pace of life that unfolds
within it.
“Our memory consists of a series of brief experiences, which
are varied and generally irrelevant: new sights, new flavours, new
sounds, new tactile sensations and new smells. And yet, for all their
irrelevance, they shape the way we think about and see the world.
Tourism, which is increasingly universal, reduces the complexity of
the world. As people gradually begin to share similar experiences,
these simple moments in which the same things are observed and consumed
may possibly help counterbalance more traumatic events and balance
complex cultural differences [...] When everyone has had the same
experiences and things are the same the world over, we shall finally
be able to say that the end of the world has arrived. The day of the
Last Judgement will be the day when all humanity will see the same
world, in every place and at the same time.” (10)
Today cities build up an idea of themselves in a constant attempt
to stoke up their legend and stay one step ahead of themselves. In
“real-time” society, there is no contemporaneity that
does not already belong to the past.
“In point of fact, what happens to topicality is what has already
happened to modernity: it is already past [...] the media are not
our contemporaries. We are currently experiencing a constantly increasing
gap between the rapidity of their transmission and our ability to
grasp and measure the present moment. More than modernity or ‘post-modernity’,
the problem concerns topicality and ‘post-topicality’”
(11)
The image and the means of its vision go beyond the traditional idea
of representation and come together in a contemporary and everyday
social problem area. Cinema, television and now also computers and
the Internet influence cities in the way they appear and in their
lifestyles, nourishing a desire to show off themselves, which affects
the city’s own choices regarding transformation or preservation.
“Display is central to our culture. We display our goods in
packaging, advertising, and retail environments, we display ourselves
in our clothes and through our body language, and we display our information
in signs and icons. More than in an “empire of signs”,
we live today in the realm of display. Without making judgements about
whether there is a true nature of things outside of appearances, or
if our culture is becoming more superficial, it is easy to observe
the increased importance not of how things appear to us, but how they
are displayed. There is an economic reason for this. Shopping, buying,
and all the rituals that go with them have displaced production as
the pivot of economic and cultural life. The regulation of those rituals
– through a web of security that extends through the visible
and invisible surveillance cameras mounted from factory floor to store,
but also through the clerical acts that make goods available at the
right time and place – provides an invisible structure beneath
our slippery reality of surfaces.” (12)
(...)
NOTES
(1)Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City”,
in SMLXL, New York, Monacelli Press, 1995 (Ital. trad. in Domus, Milan
n. 791, March 1997)
"L’Europe est destinée à devenir une espèce
de machine à tourisme de masse à l’usage du monde
entier. Elle est vouée a représenter la culture. Et
c’est un raison supplémentaire pour célébrer
ce qui est contemporain. Parce qu’évidemment ce rôle
de centre touristique mondial sera toujours plus pesant, toujours
plus présent et plus déterminant pour l’appréciation
que nous ferons de la ville historique et pour l’usage que nous
en ferons.»
(2)Rem Koolhaas in Deux conversations avec Rem Koolhaas et caetera,
Fançois Chaslin, Paris, Sens&Tonka, 2001 p. 93
(3)Hans Ibelings, Supermodernism, Architecture in the Age of Globalization.
Rotterdam, NAi Publishers, 1998 p. 44
(4)John Urry, Cities of Spectacle, presentation of the exhibition
for the Biennial of Rotterdam, 2007
(5)Reiner De Graaf and Rem Koolhaas, “€-conography, how
to undo Europe’s iconographic deficit?” in AMO, Rem Koolhaas,
&&&, Content, Koln, Taschen, 2004
(6)Charles Jencks, The Iconic Building, London, Frances Lincoln Ltd,
2005 p.7
(7)Rem Koolhaas, “The New World” in Wired, 11.06 June
2003 [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/newworld.html]
(8)Lieven De Cauter, The Capsular Civilization, Rotterdam, NAi Publishers,
2004
(9)Joan Ockman “Bestride the world like a colossus: the architect
as tourist” in Joan Ockman and Salomon Frausto (Eds), Architourism
, Munich – Berlin – London – New York, Prestel,
2005
(10)Francesco Bonami, from his introduction to the "Universal
Experience: arte e vita. Lo sguardo del turista" exhibition at
the MART museum in Rovereto from 11 February to 14 Many 2006, organised
by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago and put on in 2005 at
the Hayward Gallery in London
(11)Paul Virilio, L’espace critique, Paris, Christian Bourgois
Editeur, 1984 p. 85-86
(12)Aaron Betsky “Display engineers” in Scanning: the
aberrant architectures of Diller+Scofidio, New York, Whitney Museum
of American Art, 2003 p. 23
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