Cities around the world have increasingly turned to iconic architectural development (IAD) to compete for tourists, investment and skilled migrants. However, IADs represent more than just an economic development tool, they are explicit attempts to create iconic representations of place. As such IADs provide an important opportunity to better understand how objects gain “iconic power”—defined as the fusion of powerful social meanings with the aesthetic surface of physical objects. Through a comparative study of two museum expansion projects, this article investigates how the production process influences the content and intensity of the meanings attributed to the buildings. Adopting a cultural pragmatics approach, I demonstrate that IADs constitute a social performance where the actions taken by developers to design, construct, and promote their buildings are interpreted by the outside public and inform the meanings attributed to the final buildings. In identifying the relationship between production and performance, this article extends our understanding of iconic power while also demonstrating how theories from the “Strong Program” in cultural sociology can be exported to advance the study of cities and urban development.

中文翻译：

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作为行为艺术的建筑：评估两个博物馆发展中的“标志性力量”

世界各地的城市越来越多地转向标志性建筑开发 (IAD)，以争夺游客、投资和技术移民。然而，IAD 代表的不仅仅是一种经济发展工具，它们是创建地方标志性表示的明确尝试。因此，IAD 提供了一个重要的机会，可以更好地理解物体如何获得“标志性力量”——定义为强大的社会意义与物理物体的审美表面的融合。通过对两个博物馆扩建项目的比较研究，本文探讨了生产过程如何影响赋予建筑物的意义的内容和强度。采用文化语用学方法，我证明了 IAD 构成了一种社会绩效，其中开发人员为设计、构建、并宣传他们的建筑由外部公众解释并告知最终建筑的含义。在确定生产与表演之间的关系时，本文扩展了我们对标志性权力的理解，同时也展示了文化社会学中“强计划”的理论如何被输出以推进对城市和城市发展的研究。