ABSTRACT
What is behind this ‘universal moral code’ through which individuals are judged by other individuals and categorized according to the structural relationship that consumerism establishes between objects and users? For Baudrillard, the answer resides in the transformation of objects into signs, or in what he calls a ‘semiological disarticulation’ of the object. A comparison with Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1957) and The Eiffel Tower and Other Myths (1964) supports an in-depth examination of the Pompidou Centre in Paris (Renzo Piano, Franco Franchini and Richard Rogers), and the alleged technological innovations it promotes. The role played by public architecture in the creation and dissemination of what Baudrillard calls the semiurgy of the modern ambience – the spreading of signs at every level and sphere of society – is exposed. In this respect, Chapter 2 advances an analogy with two of Baudrillard’s notorious case studies – the ‘whatsit’ and the tail fins of American cars from the 1950s – as fake forms of technological advancement. It also discusses design by the German Bauhaus and Barthes’ Empire of Signs (1970) and the correspondent semiotic concept of empty signifier. To Baudrillard, hyper-functionalism only produces technological gizmos or gadgets.
