The icon project: the transnational capitalist class in action

This article-a product of current research on iconic architecture and capitalist globalization-argues that iconicity in general, and in architecture and urban design in particular is a telling case study of how the four fractions of the transnational capitalist class (corporate, political, professional, and consumerist) act to sustain and enlarge their hegemony through the use of both intangible and tangible objects that foster the global diffusion of the culture-ideology of consumerism. Iconicity is defined in terms of (a) fame and (b) symbolic/aesthetic significance, and while many different interpretations can be and have been applied to iconic phenomena (e.g. celebrities of various types, products, images, buildings, architects) this article will emphasize the uses of iconicity in the conscious construction of transnational capitalist class projects at various levels of action. The article concludes with an analysis of the ways in which the transnational capitalist class in and around architecture, urban design, and other iconic modalities manufactures iconicity for buildings and objects even before they are built, notably through the global dissemination of images of what they might look like-their aesthetic significance-and what they might signify-their symbolic significance