This article explores forms of visuality in architecture in which symbolic and functional values interlink by considering two visually striking and deeply symbolic landmarks that tower over their respective cities at the same time as their impact is related to the invisible wireless communication they facilitate. It contrasts cultural-theoretical responses to the Eiffel Tower (1889) with readings of the One World Trade Center (2014). In this way, we contour a theoretical framework to grasp the compounded forms of signification these towers embody and address the latent and invisible signification at work by turning to the work of the French philosophers Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998).
BarthesR. (1997). The Eiffel Tower. In LeachN. (Ed.), Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory (pp. 164-172). London, England: Routledge.
2.
BaudrillardJ. (2012). The spirit of terrorism. London, England: Verso.
3.
BirnbaumD.WallensteinS. (2014). Figuring the matrix: Lyotard’s Les Immateriaux. In ArrheniusT., et al. (Eds.), Exhibiting architecture: Place and displacement (pp. 73-89). Basel, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers.
ConleyT. (2010). “Hive of words”: The transnational poetics of the Eiffel Tower. Modernism/modernity, 17, 765-777.
8.
DuliereA.WongC. (2010). Once upon a time… Monsterpieces of the 2000s. Berkeley, CA: ORO Editions.
9.
FosterH. (2011). The art-architecture complex. London, England: Verso.
10.
GreenspanE. (2013). Battle for ground zero: Inside the political struggle to rebuild the world trade center. London, England: St. Martin’s Press.
11.
HarawayD. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In HarawayD. (Ed.), Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149-182). London, England: Routledge.
12.
HarrissJ. A. (2009, July). Still standing tall. The American Spectator, 42(6), 64-65.
13.
HassL. (2008). Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy (studies in continental thought). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
14.
HaylesN. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
15.
LaclosF. (2016). Common senses Deleuze and Lyotard between ground and form. Radical Philosophy, 197, 13-23.
16.
LatourB. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30, 225-248.
17.
LatourB. (2007). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
MowittJ. (2011). Introduction: The gold-bug. In LyotardJ. (Eds.), Discourse, figure (pp. xi-xxiii). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
23.
RobinsonL.MashakalugoC.ObolA. J.CambreM. C. (2015). Phenomenological passports: Youth and experiences of place, mobility and globalization. In PoyntzS.KennellyJ. (Eds.), Phenomenology of youth cultures and globalization: Lifeworlds and surplus meanings in changing times (pp. 154-179). London, England: Routledge.
24.
ShieldsR. (2004). Visualicity. Visual Culture in Britain, 5, 23-36.
25.
SteinerH. (2012). The earth does not move and the ground of the city—Towards a phenomenology of the city. Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture, 6, 46-55.
26.
SteinerH.SternbergM. (2015). Introduction. In SteinerH.SternbergM. (Eds.), Phenomenologies of the city: Studies in the history and philosophy of architecture (pp. 1-8). London, England: Ashgate.
27.
SteinerH.VeelK. (2011). Living behind glass façades: Surveillance culture and new architecture. Surveillance & Society, 9, 215-232.
28.
TuchmanB. (1980). August 1914. London, England: Macmillan.
29.
VeselyD. (2004). Architecture in the age of divided representation: The question of creativity in the shadow of production. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
30.
YngvessonS. W. (2015). To see the world as it appears: Vision, the gaze and the camera as technological eye. In SteinerH.VeelK. (Eds.), Invisibility studies: Surveillance, transparency and the hidden in contemporary culture (pp. 263-280). Oxford, UK: Peter Lang.
31.
YoungP. (2008). From the Eiffel Tower to the Javanese dancer: Envisioning cultural globalization at the 1889 Paris exhibition. The History Teacher, 41, 339-362.
