ABSTRACT
Baudrillard’s major breakthrough in the field of so-called critical theory is represented in his book The System of Objects (1968) , which classifies the ‘luxuriant growth of objects’ witnessed by the spread of new capitalist modes of production and consumption driven by the American way of life. The book focuses on interior design and the way architecture takes part in consumerist agendas by giving birth to a different domestic atmosphere, or ambience. Furniture, materials and interior layout are addressed as the site where a new form of manipulation emerges, thus impacting on how consumers perceive and understand the world around them. A brief explanation of Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System (1967) is deployed to grasp Baudrillard’s originality and theoretical accomplishments, especially in terms of the semiotic abstraction performed by design on contemporary furniture in order to make it flexible, manipulable and open to meanings at both a denotative and connotative level; objects are thus turned into signs. Case studies include: ancient bourgeois interiors (natural materials and colours) as opposed to the contemporary ambience, where artificial materials and colours prevail; glass as an innovative material; advertisements; pastel colours and the TV set. Among the concepts analysed are the code and ambience itself.
