Laurinda Spear, de Arquitectonica, Antron, de DuPont Advertisment, 1999

Architecture validates fashion, but fashion also validates architecture. Georges Rech or Louis Vuitton endorse and are endorsed by the aluminum warps of the Pompidou restaurant, providing an exact example of the synergies of design: stark works as the winery by Herzog & de Meuron or the baths by Zumthor obtain and grant symbolic returns when chosen as stages for fashion shows. If Nouvel advertises Swissair in front of the Institut du Monde Arabe, and Gehry promotes Knoll furniture dressed as a hockey player, why be surprised when Koolhaas presents his Villa d’Ava with a giraffe or Van Berkel uses a model agency to photograph his Moebius house?Architects have readily joined this exhibitionist climate, and if Zaha Hadid keeps to promoting computer programs, the motto of Laurinda Spear is quite a manifesto: “Great architecture...catches you with a wink and leaves you with a smile”. Compared to the shameless fetishism of mingling with fashion to the point of selling through the net a ‘Himmel:bra’ for groupies of the Viennese team, the Christine Keeler that conceals her naked body behind a fake Jacobsen chair looks like a tender, nostalgic portrait of the innocence of the sixties. But then nobody remembered the sartorial Loos...[+]