An interesting collision between advertising and public space is currently taking place in Amsterdam, where fine arts school the Sandberg Institute is selling off 39 x 25 cm “tiles” on 3,000 square metres of the exterior facade of the art academy it shares with the Rietveld Academy’s film and video department.
Billed as “Artvertising,” the project was inspired by the 2005 Internet phenomenon “Million Dollar Home Page” in which a U.K. entrepreneur named Alex Tew raised $1 million by selling advertisers individual pixels on a website for $1 apiece. (Information on the “Artvertising” project can be found at sandberg.nl:16080/artvertising.)
Teun Castelein, the Sandberg student overseeing the project-which has come to be known in the blogosphere as the Million Dollar Building-says the goal is to foster a discussion about the role of architecture and public space in a world increasingly dominated by popular culture.
“There is nothing wrong with advertising-it can be very special, intelligent and exciting,” says Castelein. “People who don’t see that are old-fashioned and conservative. Not accepting advertising in public space is like not accepting the Internet because there is such a lot of porn.”
Not surprisingly, public space advocates say there’s a clear distinction between outdoor erections and those of their Internet brethren-although they will cop to admiring some of the former. “I have to admit there are some very bright and creative minds working in outdoor advertising,” says the Toronto Public Space Committee’s Ron Nurwisah. “I can’t help but have some admiration for those people because some of that stuff is really entertaining. But at the same time, if it doesn’t respect the rights of the residents of the city, that’s kind of irrelevant.”
Castelein, on the other hand, envisions a day when the public space is dominated by advertising, which he says is not necessarily a bad thing. “Think about temporary huge brandscapes which create a totally different atmosphere in a city; real architecture loses that match,” argues Castelein. “A giant image of a basketball player in Berlin made a huge impact on me. It made me shrink and Nike grow. That’s power.”
Castelein cautions that one shouldn’t underestimate branding creativity. “There are lots of architectural failures which can be corrected in no time with a graphical injection.”
The question, of course, is who determines what is an architectural failure? (Consider that the Eiffel Tower was dismissed as a “tragic lamppost” and the “iron monster” when it was first unveiled. If it were unveiled today, would it possibly be “corrected” by the “graphical injection” of a Coca-Cola ad?)
Yet there are a number of companies that apparently share Castelein’s view of ads as art form. He says sales of the Million Dollar Building are going “quite well,” with participating advertisers including Rabobank (the biggest purchaser thus far, with 250 tiles), Grolsch beer, automaker Peugeot and clothing retailer H&M. However, Castelein says that the project is not limited solely to advertisers, with other participants including a couple who have submitted a photo of their newborn child, a non-governmental organization promoting euthanasia, and even, ironically, an anti-branding company.
