Ms Architecture Journal

How Has Instagram Impacted on Architecture?

Over the last few years Instagram has gained in popularity and we see people all around the world look to ‘the gram’ for pointers on style, fashion, décor, architecture, as well as the world of music, art, and anything else you can think of. With 9 years of style feeding into Instagram, are we now at a point where the world of architecture has been directly impacted by Instagram and how people think the world should look around them due to the popular social media photographing app?

Instagram is all pervasive within modern culture now, so this is bound to have had an effect in the way that certain things are packaged within many different sectors and industries. Why should the world of architecture be any different?

We can see it in countless areas such as features on different architecture websites where there are top 10 articles on the latest architecture designs. Instagram has suddenly become a go-to app for the brightest and the hottest of people within the architectural world. Photography has always been important to architecture and influential in how the sector moves forward with the next type of design aesthetic. This will never change, and Instagram has just powered-up this process, allowing for a much, much, larger number of people to have an influence on the process.

It is no easier than ever for anyone with a relatively good smartphone and camera to take photos of structures and buildings, frame it and filter it in a way that makes it more enticing to their audience, and have an influence on a designer or an architect in how they feel about where there designs should be heading. Instagram is now one of the most critical sources of urban design imagery anywhere on the planet.

Architecture traditionally has been a slow process, working within many different forms, expectations, and desires. As the world has sped up and forms of exposure such as Instagram have highlighted this aspect of life, the world of architecture has had to wake up to how to do things slightly differently to the expected norm. Now there is a greater need than ever before for an image of a building or structure to work immediately within the parameters of social currency, where not only does it stand as a functional piece of architecture and/or art, but also as an item that will be viewed instantly, build likes, and self-promote.

You can see this in some of the best examples of modern urban architecture all over the world, especially where there is a desire to boost awareness of sustainability and a future less dependent on traditional means. If something looks great, will definitely be Instagrammed countless times, and at the same time promote a positive image for the future, all the better for the architect of that structure or building.

Instagram and other social media platforms will continue to have an impact on architecture, as they will in countless other areas of everyday life. Although architecture should seek to keep pace with the developments of the age, there must be a preservation of accuracy, self-determination, and of quality of purpose and design. Without this, Instagram will only lead to short-term gains and long-term decline of architecture as functional pieces of art.

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