Eleventh International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

This research is part of a larger investigation in which the conceptualization of the act of metamorphosis in architecture is sought, focusing on domestic architecture built en masse in northwest Mexico. This architecture is produced in an industrialized manner in order to meet the needs presented in its market, this includes the analysis of the user under this same production process, this is where the industrialization of self of the future inhabitant occurs, this means that the houses are designed through a general assumption. To understand this transition of power; which we can call TRANS-POWER; we have to divide its conceptualization mainly into two stages, the first is that of commercial or market power, the stage of creation of the commercial object and in which the future inhabitant is a generic, industrialized user and the second, where power is transferred to the individual, in which power transforms the object. Based on this theorization, we ask ourselves, what is the symbolic consumption in inhabitation? This is seen in the effects on commercial success of mass and industrially-produced homes in northwestern Mexico. Where although power is transferred to the individual, symbolic consumption remains. For the analysis of symbolic consumption, a study of symbols of what are offered as desirable features of the product by the media has been carried out; security, modernity, economic status, safe investment, etc. This has given us a glimpse of the importance of the imaginary of the Mexican family as a symbol of consumption.