Capitalist Visuality: Branding, Architecture, and Its Visual Reproduction. A Case Study in the City of Porto

Abstract

This chapter examines the promotional image of the city of Porto, created and disseminated in the last decades, as a means through which core capitalist values, objectives and operative logic are disseminated and naturalized in public space. Mirzoeff’s conceptualization of visuality, as the aesthetic means through which dominant systems seek to present their legitimacy as self-evident, informs our examination of branding, architecture, and its visual reproduction, as discursive practices employed in the deployment of what we will designate as a capitalist visuality. Local tradition and cosmopolitan modernity are identified as the two main concepts in the promotional strategy designed to enhance the city’s appeal, which representation relies to a large extent on architectural aesthetics, namely vernacular heritage, and international architectural icons. The chapter analyzes the recurrence of these concepts in branding, promotional imagery, and architectural management.