Architecture Is a Luxury

Dear Colleagues,

Luxury is a mutifaceted term and its connotations have changed through time. In an age dominated by global media, speedy fashion cycles and sustainability, luxury has become a belligerent paradigm in architecture. Architecture is also a salvageable luxury. For those searching for luxury fashion brands and goods in extreme locations, such as FENDI’s headquarters housed in the former fascist EUR building in Rome and Studio KO’s Musee Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakech, the buildings themselves offer permanent phenomena and yet the spaces remain exclusive. Alternatively, wilfully marking the entrance into Herzog and de Meuron’s Public Hotel in New York is a continuously operating and glowing escalator, an internal street, directing guests and visitors up to the main lobby, offering luxury for all for a brief moment. Undiagnosed luxury exists within Edward Neuenschwander’s architecture.

Architecture is a luxury and it deserves to be critiqued with a focus on what this means in a contemporary sense. It continues to evolve, but how? Revisiting the six historical categories explored in The Architecture of Luxury (Ashgate, 2014), sybaritic, lucullan, architectural excess, rustic, neoEuropean and modern, this special issue aims to provide a platform for researchers to reexamine the topic and critically analyse case studies, as well underpin future visions. This issue seeks proposals that explore innocuous spaces from contemporary perspectives by synthesizing new research into recent practice and conceptualisation. Questions to consider include, but are not limited to the following: when perusing a space, is it more apt to discuss its smooth or striated/ventilated surfaces, as well as one’s sensory experience, in terms of its sustainable “deluxe” condition? When did luxurious architecture become associated with what is: banal, brutal, gauche, mundane, crass or cheap? Contributions are invited from authors who critique cases located in desolate, fertile, underground or overground, or those air-fashioned in outer spaces.

Dr. Annette Condello
Guest Editor

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