"Chairman Wu realized that Guzhen’s icon should be universally recognizable. Thus the colossal 833-foot luminaire is not a funky torchiere or Song antique but “the world’s only architecture shaped like a huge Western classical oil lamp,” as promotional material describes it. Scheduled for completion in time for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, the $38 million Century Giant Lamp Tower will stretch 430,560 square feet over 48 floors, with an immense glass chimney on which an array of images will be projected at night from inside. With an observation deck at its crown, the building has a base that will contain shops, restaurants, and a museum to document “humanity’s quest for light against darkness.”
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I think the building is totally weird for its very direct inspiration. If you ask me I'd actually prefer a shoe than a lamp as a building. Oh global world...already making us uncomfortable with aesthetic choices.
On Kitsch: "Theodor Adorno perceived this in terms of what he called the "culture industry," where the art is controlled and formulated by the needs of the market and given to a passive population which accepts it — what is marketed is art that is non-challenging and formally incoherent, but which serves its purpose of giving the audience leisure and something to watch. It helps serve the oppression of the population by capitalism by distracting them from their alienation. Contrarily, art (not kitsch) for Adorno is supposed to be subjective, challenging, and oriented against the oppressiveness of the power structure. He claimed that kitsch is parody of catharsis, and a parody of aesthetic experience."
But we have to remember that not all individuals in a population are artists or even care about aesthetic choices...otherwise how can you explain public spaces in America (read Malls).
