Mass-Minded Systems: American Architecture and the Rise of Social Media
Open Access
- Author:
- Longenbach, Adam John
- Graduate Program:
- Architecture
- Degree:
- Master of Architecture
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- April 04, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Darla V Lindberg, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Darla V Lindberg, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- Facebook
Mass Marketing
Mass Production
American Architecture
Social Media
Mass Media
Twitter
Periodization - Abstract:
- The overlying goal of this thesis is to analyze the built environment as an embodiment of cultural paradigms from the Renaissance to today to demonstrate the frameworks that will shape social spaces in architecture in the future. In pursuit of this goal, this thesis elicits two central questions: What are the underlying social structures that necessitate the construction of a building, and once it is built, how does the building affect society in return? In exploration of these questions, this thesis hypothesizes the idea that we are what we build, and to a degree, we become what we inhabit. In this way, the built environment innately develops as a historical archive that is reflective of cultural values and developments in technology and industry as an embodiment of collective thought. As values, industry, technology and paradigms change, the built environment changes as well. However, given the longevity of architecture, what is the relationship between the created built environment of one generation with the architecture and thought of subsequent generations? While all architecture chronicles cultural development at the moment of its construction, there are cases where architecture, through its longevity, also perpetuates the underlying social structures that necessitated its creation in the first place. Changes in the built environment resonate for generations, and If we are what we build, what is the affect of this architecture as a physical manifestation, and consequently a perpetuation, of antiquated collective thought? Though this analysis may also hold true for other artistic disciplines of music, painting or sculpture, architecture is a composition to which society is inescapably subjected. In this context, architecture can be regarded as an institution - an influential body that implicitly affects individual and collective thought and behavior. Such institutionalization of the built environment in the United States, its impact on the nation’s social spaces, is the primary area of investigation for this thesis. Specifically, the architecture that evolved in the context of mass media and other mass-minded processes of mass production, mass dissemination, and mass marketing from their origination in the Renaissance Period to their current condition in the United States today, and the disparity between this architecture and emerging changes in media and collective thought. While positive characteristics of affordability and accessibility can be attributed to these mass-minded processes, which the built environment would embody, there came also unintended, unforeseeable negative social consequences that built space would inevitably concretize as well. Mass media, as a by-product of these mass-minded processes, was selected as the area of investigation for analyzing the unintentional social consequences of these processes resulting from mass media’s underlying and candid influence on individual and collective social behavior. The unfavorable social attributes of mass media are grounded in social isolation, encompassing qualities of segregation, homogeneity, and exclusivity - societal qualities that were recorded in architecture and are present in the current built environment. An understanding of the social consequences of these mass-minded processes is possible only with the benefit of reflection on the evolution of these systems. A thorough analysis of their development provides a backdrop for understanding emerging changes in processes to become sustainably-minded, changes in media systems to become social media, and hypothesizing the underlying social influences these structures will create. The positive qualities of social media are grounded in integration - human interaction, heterogeneity, and ritual - social qualities that are in contrast to the characteristics associated with mass media. In time, when the virtual environment of social media inevitably translates into the physical environment of architecture, the architectural embodiments of these media systems will conflict as well. This discordance is suggestive of the onset of a paradigm shift from isolation to integration, which provides an opportunity to explore the perpetuation of antiquated thought through the architecture of one generation as it lags the social progress of future generations. This exploration articulates the relationship between architecture and cultural for the purpose of conceptualizing an inevitable social-media architecture and anticipating abundantly-social built spaces in the future.