Abstract

Contemporary city is not only a place for consumption of different sorts of goods. Now it is consumed as such working as a generalized machine of pleasure. Since everything that happens in a particular city follows the logic of commercial enterprise its squares and gardens, streets and parks are turning into showcases for tourist gaze. Attempting at being attractive for an idle sightseeing built environment shatters into thousands of pieces each of them crying for attention. Buildings are regarded spectacularly for their more or less intriguing external appearance. Nevertheless, people still live in the cities although their lives are now sold at the marketplace in their naked authenticity. How does this entrepreneurial strategy impacts on the visual representation of architectural objects and city environment in general? Since commercialization of contemporary cities is an overall trend of urban development real estate advertisement should be evaluated as a core instance for understanding of ongoing transformations. My assumption is that fragmentation of a city is most clearly documented in such advertisements explicit in their intention to sell this or that building. Architectural objects are, therefore, isolated from reality and put exactly in the middle of nowhere, exemplifying ontological dissection of a thing and its snapshot.