CONTENTS
Foreword: Consuming Signs ix
Mike Gane
Introduction: Philosophy as a Commodity: Mode d'Emploi xi
Francesco Proto
The Aesthetics and the Machine 1
Francesco Proto
Cheese-(beau)burger
Post-orgasmic chill
Pop-nography
The Prozac effect
Disneyland: one-way ticket
The emperor's new clothes
Chapter One : Absolute Architecture 19
The Singular Objects of Architecture
Radicality
Singular objects in architecture
Illusion. Virtuality. Reality
A destabilized area
Concept. Irresolution. Vertigo
Values of functionalism
New York or Utopia
Architecture: between nostalgia and anticipation
(Always) seduction
Provocation. Secrets
The aesthetics of modernity
A heroic architectural act?
Art, architecture and postmodernity
Visual disappointment
Intellectual disappointment
The aesthetics of disappearance
Chapter Two : Cool Cities 37
America
Salt Lake City
New York
Santa Barbara
Venice and Porterville
Disneyland
The Bonaventure Hotel
The realized utopia
Cool Memories I (1980--85)
Urbino. Gubbio. Mantua
Trieste
Palermo
Pompeii
Montreal
Tower blocks
Velizy
Velizy 2
Versailles. St Peter
The Pompidou Centre
Urban monsters
Paris
Berlin
Rome in December
Night on the cities
Dunkirk
Ideal City
Fifth Avenue
Suburban comfort
Cool Memories II (1987--90)
American towns
Rio
Buenos Aires
Puerto Stroessner
Sites of fascination
Venice (California)
Los Angeles
Marilyn's grave
Salt Lake City
Las Vegas Disneyworld
Beyond Las Vegas
Venice (California)
New York. Lisbon
Shop windows
Shop windows 2
Arche de la Defense
Coupole
Sao Paulo
Copacabana
Cool Memories III (1992--95)
Venice
Puerto Vallarta
Bern. Zurich
Brasilia
Brasilia's satellites
Free zones' farce
American campuses
Pointe du Raz
Copacabana Montreal. Rio
Pompeii
Luxembourg Gardens
Cool Memories IV (1995--2002)
New York
Tierra del Fuego
New York
Naples
Pompeii
Disney Company
Future Cities
St Petersburg
Bogota
Buenos Aires
Palacio Itamarati
California
Villa Palagonia (Palermo)
Villa Palagonia II
Chapter Three : The Indifference of Space 71
Le Parc de la Villette
Urbanism and architecture
Chapter Four : The Code and the Eye 81
Simulations
Hyperreal and imaginary [Disneyland]
The stucco angel [Baroque Architecture]
The tactile and the digital [World Trade Center]
Trompe l'Oeil or enchanted simulation [Duke of Urbino's and Federico da Montefeltro's studiolos]
Ecstasy and inertia [Pompeii]
Chapter Five : The Rise of the Object: the End of Culture 95
The Formal Liturgy of the Object
The consumer society
Profusion and display
The drugstore
Parly 2
Hypermarket and Hypercommodity
Absolute Advertising, Ground Zero Advertising
Mass (Sociology of)
Mass languages
A structure of modernity
An operational language
Beyond truth and falsehood
The internal logic of this neo-language
Chapter Six : The ideology of Technique 123
Technique as social practice
The organization, as myth, of technique
Conclusion: `technique totally in the service of everyday life?'
Ephemeral and Durable
The Irony of Technology
The Beaubourg Effect: Implosion or Deterrence?
Chapter Seven : The Aesthetic Suicide 151
Questions of Strategy
Truth or Radicality: The Future of Architecture
The Homeopathic Disappearance of Architecture: an interview with Jean Baudrillard 175
Aesthetics and design
The lost language of seduction

Success in architecture
Duchamp in architecture
The object as a sign
Space as a thought
Baudrillard, Perspective and the Void of Architecture 181
Keith Broadfoot
Rex Butler
Essential Bibliography 189
Further Reading 191