The ocular-centric obsession of contemporary societies

Abstract

Architecture has significantly transformed in the last century with the development of modern technologies. Since the advent of the industrial age and the advancement of technological tools, architecture has developed, assuming diverse forms, while shaping humanity's immediate built environment. These advances didn't only shape our built environment but also changed our inherited culture. With the easy accessibility to more amenities, our reliability on extensions increased. Moreover, while corporations sought to increase more revenues from profitable products, new strategies were developed to attract more customers. These strategies were established on ocular pleasing products for more desirability. Such systems were not only implemented on micro appliances, but were also reflected on our built environment and urban planning. This paper highlights how societies became obsessed with ocularcentric products. However, it indicates how, in the past century, the visual sense became more dominant over the rest of the senses. This dominance has not only prevailed through literature, architecture, and art, but also ocularcentrism, advocating architects, stakeholders, and planners to prioritize aesthetically pleasing products over the social needs of residents. This paper highlights the ocularcentric phenomenon of societies by providing real-life examples of architecture that act as a repellent to a specific social class, in which it contradicts the sacred role of architecture as an answer to our existential thrownness.