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當布拉德·彼特開始設計建築

發表於 : 2008-06-30, 10:59
eaGer
http://www.bundpic.com/link.php?linkid=5188

越來越多好萊塢明星摻和到建築或其他設計中。斯蒂芬·貝利認為,這種現象不過是有效的營銷策略,對於真正的設計毫無意義。「在過去,建築師或者設計師的職責是解決問題,現在卻成了製造問題。」

正像他們說的那樣,我正欲與傾國傾城的「名望女神」墜入愛河,結果卻同噁心的蕩婦名人發生了一夜情。

對於建築和設計而言,名望就像是肥皂上貼的標籤,品牌價值至關重要。Hermes 和無名街邊小店所售之物,價格自然是一個天一個地,然而,質量過硬的產品總能贏得顧客的芳心,這時候,Hermes 的名望便值得被持久地珍視。名望像一杯珍貴的葡萄酒,年代越久,味道越微妙複雜,值得玩味,不可急於求成。相比之下,明星恰恰相反,是容易調配、口感輕浮的雞尾酒,一口吞下,無所留戀,毫無價值可言,不過是買個宿醉。

如今的我們正處在一個好奇的歷史時刻,相互追逐嬉戲的建築、設計、明星和品牌到底有多吸引人?著名的麻省理工學院出版社最近出版了一本新書,在書中,安娜·克林格曼(Anna Klingmann)將一度被譽為「藝術之母」的建築,描述成「一項有效的營銷策略」。今天的客戶們可不管文藝復興時期的阿爾伯蒂(Leon Baptista Alberti)在《建築十論》裡說了什麼,他們對建築表現語言的要求在於它是否上照。在美國著名作家及記者湯姆·沃爾夫(Tom Wolfe)口中,用這種對建築驚鴻一瞥式的記錄來吸引客戶的注意,等同於通過街邊的石塊來判斷整個街道。一眨眼之間,建築淪為形狀、顏色、輪廓以及體積的簡單組合。沒有比建築師藍天組(Coop Himmelblau)為慕尼黑設計的「寶馬世界」(BMW-Welt)更貼切的例子了。這簡直是個天造的「有效營銷策略」,一邊是世界著名的汽車製造商,一邊是前途無量的建築設計團體,在這場「策略」遊戲中,誰才是所謂的「明星」?

大名鼎鼎的布拉德·彼特也趟過這趟渾水。《商業週刊》 2005 年的一篇文章顯示,這位男明星曾是弗蘭克·蓋裡(Frank Gehry)事務所的成員之一。真相是,弗蘭克·蓋裡是彼特在貝弗利山莊的別墅—一座諾曼底風格豪宅中的酒窖的設計者。作為回報,彼特答應為其在英國的蘇塞克斯項目上搭一把手。當時,蓋裡旗下的項目、位於赫夫市濱海地區(Hove seafront)的超豪華新興復合住宅區正在媒體上「興風作浪」,而這裡的房子也都是為「小貝夫婦」等超級明星所定製的。為了研究「明星+ 建築」的模式,第二年,布拉德·彼特和安吉麗娜·茱莉還專程前往匹茲堡,拜訪了賴特(Frank Lloyd Wright)為當地百貨公司富商考夫曼家族設計的著名的落水山莊(Falling Water),雖然結果他僅僅在那裡買了輛勞斯萊斯,但如果你在 google 上搜索「Brad Pitt Gulfstream」(布拉德·彼特和灣流),第一個相關結果將不是關於富人的私人飛機,而是一個位於新奧爾良州的建築項目。

事情是這樣的。去年,在自由主義中堅分子最愛的克林頓全球倡議大會(Clinton Global Initiative) 上, 有13 名建築師被邀請到卡特裡娜颶風的受災區設計「生態型」低價住宅,把那些被吹歪了的房子修正過來。面對這個高度概念化的搶救計劃,彼特為面目全非的新奧爾良重災區「低九區」(Lower Ninth Ward)掏出了500 萬美元。反對專橫而野心勃勃的建築的概念,霎時主導了彼特的情緒,他的講演中充滿了關於建築形態與災難的各種隱喻,然而,在解釋為何從體態婀娜的詹妮弗· 安妮斯頓轉移到身材豐滿的安吉麗娜·茱莉時,他說,就像建築和設計一樣,愛情有時候也需要「換換形狀」。

布拉德·彼特身上的這些奇怪狀況不僅發生在他的祖國,也時常呈現為「國際交流」。如果建築師和設計師能變成「明星」(就像諾曼·福斯特可以去俄羅斯設計大樓,蓋裡可以把名字貼到蒂凡尼手鐲上那樣),明星為什麼不能堂而皇之地享用「建築師」的頭銜呢?英國家居設計品牌Habitat 早在多年前就有所覺悟,在推出一款所謂「非常重要的產品」時,電視促銷說那是由運動員設計的「運動風潮家居產品」。3年前,幾近退休的搖滾歌手藍尼·克拉維茨(Lenny Kravitz)也加入進來了。他渾身散發著蒼白,明明早已過上悠哉游哉的中產階級生活,卻還吼叫著貧乏的Rap,就像他設計的酒店公寓一樣偽善。出自這位億萬富翁之手的位於邁阿密海灘的Delano 酒店套間,是十足諷刺的假冒的藝術。可笑的人不止他一位,凱莉·米洛(Kylie Minogue)還設計過亞麻床單,不過,這其實跟諾曼·福斯特設計法國米洛高架橋(Millau Viaduct)是一個道理—僅僅因為真正的設計者、橋樑專家MichelVirlogeux 不夠有名而已,對此我真是無話可說。

是建築師和設計師們專業技能的喪失,招致了紛至沓來瞎摻和的演員、音樂人、模特。在過去,不清楚技術原理的人是無法設計樓房的,然而現在,他們可以聘請別人代而為之。在過去,建築師或者設計師的職責是解決問題,現在卻成了製造問題。為扎哈·哈迪德(Zaha Hadid)工作的工程師會向委託人保證,你可以隨意發揮,胡亂塗抹,專家顧問團保證會讓房子站起來。小說家約翰·厄普代克(John Updike)曾說「明星就是一張吃掉面孔的假面具」(Celebrity is a mask that eats the face),我看明星也吃「建築物的外觀」(facade)。

發表於 : 2008-06-30, 11:01
eaGer
http://www.designweek.co.uk/Articles/13 ... ayley.html

by:STEPHEN BAYLEY

DOESN'T SEE A PROBLEM WITH HOLLYWOOD ACTORS AND POP STARS POSING AS DESIGNERS AND ARCHITECTS. PERHAPS CELEBRITY AND CREATIVITY ARE BOTH JUST EFFECTIVE MARKETING TOOLS

I fell in love with the gorgeous goddess Fame, but ended up on a one night stand with the disgusting slut Celebrity. Or so they say.

Fame is to architecture and design what brand value is to soap: if patiently acquired, if based on a fundamentally sound product that works and has, over time, delighted the consumer, then fame is precious and lasting. It is like a fine, mature wine: subtle and complex. Fame can't be rushed. Celebrity is an alcopop: easily acquired, bright, trashy and not worth lingering over. Then there is the hangover.

We are at a curious historical moment when architecture, design, celebrity and brand are chasing each other, not altogether attractively. The distinguished Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press has published a book (by Anna Klingmann) where architecture, once thought to be the mother of the arts, is described as 'an effective marketing tool'. Today's corporate clients don't want Alberti's proportions. Instead, they require morphic expressionism that photographs well, what Tom Wolfe called 'kerbflash'. This is architecture as blink-graphics: a shape, a colour, a profile, a bulk that makes an immediate impression. You can find a superlative example in Munich: architect Coop Himmelblau has built BMW-Welt, an apocalyptically effective marketing tool for the car manufacturer. But it builds the architect's brand as well. Who is the celebrity here?

Brad Pitt has been at it. A Business Week article in 2005 showed the actor in Frank Gehry's studio. It was Gehry who designed the bodega in Pitt's Normandy-style Beverly Hills chateau. And Pitt is said to have had a hand in Gehry's attention-getting design for a deluxe high rise on the Hove seafront in Sussex. To research celebrity architecture, the following year Brad and Angelina visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, his 1938 house for the Kaufmann department store family. Unfortunately for his otherwise impeccably Green credentials, Brad was shuttled from the airport in an SUV and returned to it in a Rolls-Royce. Be that as it may, if you Google 'Brad Pitt Gulfstream' the first reference is not to the preferred private aircraft of the very rich but to an architectural project in New Orleans.

This is Make It Right, announced in last year's love-in of the liberal elite, The Clinton Global Initiative. Thirteen architects, including Adjaye Associates and Shigeru Ban, have been invited to design eco-intelligent houses on stilts to replace houses that weren't on stilts, thus devastated by Hurricane Katrina floods. Pitt donated $5m (£2.5m) to this high-concept salvage in the poor Lower Ninth Ward. Thwarted architectural ambitions have dominated his psychology: tectonic and morphological metaphors feature in his discourse. Explaining the swap of lissom Aniston for buxom Jolie, Brad said that, like architecture and design, love is 'sometimes changing shape'.

Brad is responding to peculiar circumstances not just at home, but abroad. If architects and designers can become celebrities (as Norman goes global and Gehry lends his name to Tiffany jewellery) then - surely - celebrities can return the compliment and become architects. Habitat sensed this several years ago with a 'Very Important Products' promotion where television and sports personalities designed household and personal accoutrements. Three years ago Lenny Kravitz, a funkster nearing retirement as his polite middle-class sexiness paled before the brute ghetto carnality of rap, became a designer. At the end of last year his Florida Room opened in the painfully hip Delano Hotel. Appropriately, this was during the preposterous international conga-line of self-loving neophiliacs that is Art Basel Miami Beach, a celebrity billionaire boot sale of pseudo-art.

Kravitz's hotel lounge was, inevitably, described as iconic. He's not alone in jumping the species barrier. Kylie Minogue has 'designed' bed linen, though if this was in the same sense that Norman Foster designed the sensational Millau Viaduct (engineered to stay aloft by the less celebrated Michel Virlogeux), I can't say.

The rush of actors, musicians and models to become architects and designers is partly a consequence of de-skilling. It used to be difficult to design buildings as you had to know about technical things. Now we have people to do it for us. Architecture and design used to be about problem-solving, now they make their own problems. Ask any engineer who has had to make a Zaha Hadid design stand up. If you can squiggle it, consultants or expert systems can make it work. Lenny can squiggle. He says, 『I want to do architecture, but I'm not an architect'. I wanted to make a hit single, but I'm not a musician.

Some recent US research showed that the share price of large corporations moved in the opposite direction to the chief executive's media profile. The better-known the boss, the more the business sucked. Something similar is happening with architecture and design: Philippe Starck may be the most celebrated designer ever, but his lasting influence will be minimal. Truth is, designers are at their most influential when most obscure: ask Virlogeux. Novelist John Updike said, 『Celebrity is a mask that eats the face.』 He should have said 『facade'.

Stephen Bayley is a design critic and commentator. His own website also bills him as the second most intelligent man in Britain