The Singular Objects of Architecture

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by Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel,

Translated by Robert Bononno,

Foreword by K. Michael Hays

University of Minnesota Press

Due/Published November 2002, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 0816639124

What is a singular object? An idea, a building, a color, a sentiment, a human being. Each in turn comes under scrutiny in this dialogue between these two interesting thinkers. From such singular objects, Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel move on to fundamental problems of politics, identity, and aesthetics as their exchange becomes an imaginative exploration of the possibilities of modern architecture and the future of modern life.

Among the topics the two speakers take up are the city of tomorrow and the ideal of transparency, the gentrification of New York City and Frank Gehry's surprising Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As Nouvel prompts Baudrillard to reflect on some of his signature concepts (the virtual, transparency, fatal strategies, oblivion, and seduction, among others), the confrontation between such philosophical concerns and the specificity of architecture gives rise to new formulations--and a new way of establishing and understanding the connections between the practitioner and the philosopher, the object and the idea.

 This wide-ranging conversation builds a bridge between the fields of architecture and philosophy. At the same time it offers readers a view of the meeting of objects and ideas in which the imagined, constructed, and inhabited environment is endlessly changing.

Review

During the 1960s, architectural theory began to move away from functionalist, empiricist, and foundationalist ways of thinking and toward approaches that examined the social, philosophical, and ideological aspects of architecture. As K. Michael Hays suggests in his foreword, many poststructuralist thinkers, Baudrillard among them, began to look at the “unintended ideological presumptions that architectural procedures and techniques alternately enabled or tried to remove from the possibility of thinking . . . .” Baudrillard and Nouvel’s scintillating and provocative book continues this mode of thinking, offering an intriguing and fruitful meeting of architecture and philosophy. Jean Nouvel, a leading French architect, and Baudrillard cleverly push and challenge one another to examine how certain buildings and landscapes reflect elements of contemporary society. Looking at such examples as the World Trade Center, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the gentrification of New York City, the two authors creatively investigate the aesthetic, social, and political aspects of our built environment. The crucial Baudrillardian concepts of the simulacra, consumerism, and the increasingly virtual nature of contemporary reality are integral to these conversations and create new ways of looking at architecture. Likewise, these Baudrillardian concepts take on different significance within the context of architecture. The authors also develop the notion of the singular object which can be architectural, theoretical, human, or simply a sentiment. The singular object exists not in culture but alongside it and challenges the prevailing status quo as it opens new ways of thinking about society. In this sense, there is a thoughtful and refreshing utopian element to The Singular Objects of Architecture, one that envisions an architecture that can change our perceptions of the world.