Representation of Elite Values of the Modern Society in Minimalist Living Architectural Space

Consumerism prepared consciousness of people for perception of goods through signs. Architecture acting as a commodity is also a carrier of signs that allow not only being sold, but also the creation of belonging to a certain stratum or a social group in the consumer’s mind. An opposite tendency (anti-consumerism) made the consumer society refashion itself so as not to lose the buyer who consciously began to refuse to buy goods. The minimalist movement that has emerged in the society, which is based on a minimalist lifestyle where a person stops paying attention to things, sets the person’s focus on the main social benefits that are not affordable for the majority (for example freedom, time, nature, peace, space). This creates a social-consumerist precedent when minimalism as a lifestyle allows retaining the individual as a buyer. The main goal of this article is to look into representations of such benefits of the modern consumer society as the value of freedom, the value of time, the value of nature, the value of peace in the minimal architectural living space, which shape the overall value – the value of physical space. Architectural living space, acting both as a physical and social category, reflects the style and the way of living of its owner. The genetic connection with the architecture of modernism allowed interpolation between the modernism ideas, elite social benefits and their representation in the architectural minimalist living space: between the “free plan” of Le Corbusier and the “value of freedom”;“organic architecture” of F.L.Wright and the “value of nature”; “Less is more” of Mies van “der Rohe and the “value of time”; between the “organic architecture” of F.L. Wright and “Less is more”of Mies van der Rohe and the “value of peace”.