Problems of reproducibility in architecture The existential and metaphysical subtleties of copyright

摘要

Two years ago, a much-publicised event brought into the spotlight again Western architecture's centuries-old quandary about the relationship between original and copy, updated for the contemporary global market. A prominent design by British architect and Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid for an office and retail centre in Beijing, China was pirated and cloned by a competing developer in the nearby city of Chongquing. prompting a race to finish construction and a scuffle of press statements and litigation. Imitation maybe the sincerest form of flattery, and influence the very mechanism of cultural evolution, but what then is the nature of the claim - cultural, commercial, or legal - to architectural authorship? A new exhibition at New York's Center for Architecture aims to tackle this philosophical question by exploring the dominant social medium available for the practical resolution of such dilemmas -mainly, law.