Disiplinlerarası Yenilik Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

This paper discusses the changing role of media in the experience of architecture. The purpose of the discussion is to emphasize that buildings are mainly seen and experienced through their visual aspects in the media, and that social media, with its mediatic effects, is now determining the new ways of seeing and experiencing buildings. The paper, therefore, defines it as social media architecture. However, social media has the capacity to be used as an environment through which buildings are experienced not only through their images, but also through their social, spatial, functional and environmental relations. The discussion of the paper is supported by Google Trends graphics illustrating the frequency of the use of terms “digital media” and “social media”. One of the graphics also illustrates the frequency of the use of term “Hamburg Elbphilharmonie”. The images of this building were designed by star architects Herzog & de Meuron in the early 2000s, but its construction took decades. As a result, the building has been criticized by newspapers, magazines and journals throughout its construction. The architects even exhibited critical texts and images of the building published in the media at the 2012 Venice Biennale, a major architectural media event. So, the building, its spectacular images and the long-term construction process have had an interesting appearance in the media, which is worth discussing in the paper as a star architectural project. In this context, the paper discusses with the help of Google Trends graphics that the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie becomes a popular building as soon as its construction is completed. But it becomes even more popular because of the images of the building that dominate social media after its completion. This building is the case study of the paper because it establishes a critical ground for star architecture projects built in the 2000s that are discussed in terms of their transformative effects on the cities in which they are located, as in the case of the Guggenheim Museum project built in Bilbao in the 1990s. The paper argues that as buildings become more critical in terms of their large scales and spectacular images, architecture needs and demands to be experienced in its critical dimensions more than ever.