Monument for the Digital Era
Andreas Huyssen, a theorist and historian of German culture, questions whether monuments need to be built at all in a postmodern era in which monuments live as images. He remarks that the artists Christo and Jean-Claude’s veiling of the Reichstag in 100,000 square meters of polypropylene, which lasted for a mere 14 days, lives indefinitely through reproduced images in books, posters, digital files, and souvenirs.68 Similarly, the cube, as one of the most photographed landmarks in New York City and the world (Figure 6.13), lives in a countless number of devices and computers, leaving an enduring virtual mark in the collective memory of this generation. Whether the physical glass cube lasts forever seems less significant. “Memory becomes stone in architecture,”69 writes Huyssen. The Apple cube suggests that people yearn for architectural monuments even in the digital era, but monuments need not be made in stone. Glass is, symbolically and materially, a reflector of the era in which Apple made its intimate machines in glass. Glass is as mercurial as the images of the surroundings that it reflects and the information it transmits. A mediator between computer devices and humans, glass is apt for a monument symbolizing the age of information.
FIGURE 6.13 People gather around the cube on the GM Building plaza.
Photograph: Peter Aaron (2006)/OTTO.
Notes
- 1 Tim Bajarin, “Learning This 1 Thing Helped Me Understand Apple’s Strategy,” Time, April 3, 2013, accessed July 1, 2019, http://time.com/4723389/apple-strategy-iphone-ipad-apple-tv/.
- 2 Le Corbusier, Paul Stirton, and Tim Benton, “Glass, the Fundamental Material of Modern Architecture,” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 2012), 297.
3 Partner James O'Callaghan was working for engineering firm Dewhurst Macfarlane & Partners at the time he began collaborating with Apple, and until he co-founded his own firm in 2004. He credits his former employer Tim Macfarlane as a pioneer in the field of structural glass. James O’Callaghan “Glass Challenges: Past, Present, and Future” in Paulo J. da Sousa Cruz, Ed., Structure and Architecture
Karl Backus, a Principal at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson who has served as the Design Principal for Apple retail stores, invited James O’Callaghan to work on the Apple project following collaboration with BCJ on the Coming Museum. For Corning, the team also worked with TriPyramid Structures, a Massachusetts metal design and fabrication firm that would provide the custom fabricated metal fittings for many of Apple’s glass structures. BCJ had mentioned the possibility of an all-glass staircase with Apple prior to O’Callaghan’s involvement on the SoHo store. Karl Backus, phone interview by author, August 16, 2019.
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