Capitalizing on the impact, with its strong added value, of architecture and contemporary art in the business world, the promoter would boast of the merits of the building and its location, thanks to the media buzz around its installation. The frontier had been breached, the process of disinhibition of architects with regard to communication was underway.
Today architectural intervention has become a real tool for communication on different scales; commercial, touristic, advertising. The message carried by architecture, being no more than a symbol, can serve to affirm or redefine an identity. In our postmodern, hypermodern or, quite simply, contemporary society, the added value of architecture is used as a marketing strategy in real estate promotion.
Architecture tends to communicate. It pushes the envelope, beyond its principal function as shelter, towards the solidification of a cultural and technical situation. Image or place of power, of ideology or of control, architecture is not free to choose its camp. The edifices that populate the city, according to Paul Valéry3 are sometimes “mute, others speak and others, well…/… sing.” Architecture is a form of language. A generous language for its inhabitants, perhaps even dangerous when it comes to the most subversive architectures. Designing, then building, are guided acts, driven by a concept, an idea, in response to a need.