Architecture In The Age Of Instagram

When the double tap becomes the coveted outcome of design

- Angel Yulo

Our days are deluged with photos. We seem to be very happy with it. A 2016 study published in the journal Psychological Science concluded the brain reacts to Instagram heart icons like one were eating chocolate or winning the lotto.

Instagram representatives, in their last official event, announced that the photo-sharing app has 800 million active monthly users. An average of 95 million photos and videos are posted daily, generating about 4.2 billion likes. Of these, 74.6 million posts are tagged #architecture, 9.8m #buildings, and 8.6m #archilovers. Note that there are millions leftuntagged.

Architectural imagery has reached a mass of viewers traditional publishers like Phaidon and Rizzoli never could with their sleek historical surveys and monographs all in the span of 8 years (Instagram was launched in 2010). The design section, with its higher price points and niche readership, had less foot traffic in our bookstores.

Today, the design section creeps onto our screens we crawl the Metro Manila commutes with our fingers scrolling.

If architecture were a country, Instagram is its tourism campaign. And any country would be happy with a good volume of tourists, relishing the sights. I feel this is a great step in the democratization of a language and experience that was surrounded by cordons real and conjectured. Instagram makes the guy on the street realize that architecture is not a remote world—and that the street he treads everyday matters in this world.