In PLAT 9.0: Commit, Walter Benn Michaels asked: beyond its spatial effects, does architecture have the capacity to convey a thought?
In a capitalist society where even such spatial effects are commodified, providing desirable user experiences to potential consumers threatens to eclipse all other aspirations. If the intention behind a work of architecture is only to provoke the interest of a consumer, interpretation of it as something other than a commodity is impossible. Positioning user experience as the sole concern of architecture risks relinquishing its capacity to carry an independent meaning. PLAT 10.0 seeks speculations on the significance of a parallel audience distinct from the user: that of the beholder. The former implies experiencing an architectural object. The latter involves interpreting the embedded intentions of said object. To use architecture means to engage only with the physical existence of a work; to behold it considers a built work as the conveyor of ideas. If a project acknowledges and engages with this distinction, it can begin to resist its commodification. This aspiration may seem naively heroic, but does architecture have a choice? How can it uphold a status as an active agent in society while being subsumed by the market?
