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HIGH ASPIRATIONS: THE SKYSCRAPER AS A CORPORATE ICON

BAUSER, PAUL J
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1116273955

Abstract Details

2005, MARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of).
Driven to gain increasing market shares, corporations are compelled to formulate distinct public imagery. Since the advent of the high-rise typology the skyscraper has provided an architectural means to this end. The end of the 19th century saw development of the corporate headquarters building as the new power structure, conveying images of opulence and wealth through increasingly tall towers. Today, the speed and pace of our contemporary, media culture has rendered architecture a slow and antiquated mode of communication. Our lives are saturated with fast-paced, adaptable, graphic, imagery. Buildings cannot keep pace. Architecture lags behind current culture; its ideas outdated before ground is broken. The question arises, what will become the enduring symbol of the corporation? Imagery, and the creation of a pictorial language have long been driving forces of communication enterprises. Since the establishment of the Christian church, icons have conveyed a greater depth of meaning. As the manifestation and condensation of an array of ideas and principles into a single, recognizable object, icons became powerful tools of influence and control, most recently through the corporate application of branding. This corporate persona is a powerful construct, one to be vigilantly maintained, but as high-rise building can no longer keep pace with evolving corporate imagery, designing a purely iconographic image of the corporate headquarters tower is no longer a valid architectural response. Rather, imagery should be found rather than sought. This thesis seeks to establish a 21st century architectural icon for Western & Southern Financial Group by allowing the pictorial, to result from objectivity. Rather than designing an image for the corporation, a contrived process likely to prove ineffective, the project aims to promote the corporation through an architecture that is responsive to specific scales of influence: sustainability, visibility, connectivity, and employability. This set of ideals formulates specific design parameters capable of generating distinctive imagery that can be endowed with meaning over time. In allowing image to result from these objective design processes, the tower becomes a collector rather than a generator of meaning; an adaptable construct capable of reinterpretation, promising longevity over obsolescence; an icon.
Michael McIntruf (Advisor)
247 p.
Architecture
Corporation; High-rise; Skyscraper; Icon; Iconography; Tower; Urban; Identity; Branding; Image; Company; Architecture; Structure

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • BAUSER, P. J. (2005). HIGH ASPIRATIONS: THE SKYSCRAPER AS A CORPORATE ICON [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1116273955

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • BAUSER, PAUL. HIGH ASPIRATIONS: THE SKYSCRAPER AS A CORPORATE ICON. 2005. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1116273955.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • BAUSER, PAUL. "HIGH ASPIRATIONS: THE SKYSCRAPER AS A CORPORATE ICON." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1116273955

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.