“Form follows Instagram feeds.”
Form Follows Instagram Feed: How Pop Culture and Social Media Are Reshaping Architecture
By Ana Isabella Fernandez
What do the Museum of Ice Cream, Kim Kardashian’s Tadao Ando lake house, and a Stockholm startup office inspired by an influencer's Instagram grid have in common? They weren't just designed for people—they were designed to be looked at. Or more precisely, to be photographed, shared, and scrolled past.
In the age of content, architecture has started performing for the feed. Pop culture and social media are no longer peripheral to design—they’re embedded in it. They don’t just influence what buildings look like; they shape how they’re conceived, commissioned, and consumed.
This shift isn’t entirely new. Pop culture has been sneaking into architecture since postmodernism cracked open modernism’s stoic minimalism. But what’s different now is the speed and reach. What used to take years to trickle into design studios now happens overnight through a viral image or a celebrity home tour.
The challenge now is urgent: how do we create architecture that’s culturally relevant without becoming disposable? As trends accelerate and attention spans shorten, architects are being pulled between the allure of aesthetic virality and the responsibility of sustainable, lasting design. This isn’t just about taste—it’s about ethics.
Pop Culture as Precedent
Pop culture’s influence on architecture isn’t new. In the mid-20th century, the bold colors and irreverent shapes of pop art spilled into postmodern architecture, pushing against the rigid formalism of modernism. Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center, with its sweeping, futuristic forms, captured the Jet Age’s fascination with glamour, speed, and spectacle. The Sydney Opera House, inspired by sculptural curves and abstract expressionism, became both an icon and a meme long before the internet existed.
Today, the Museum of Ice Cream, built for selfies and brand partnerships, functions as architecture in its most digitized form: not built to last, but built to be shared. The Instagrammable is now an architectural category.
The Rise of the Influencer Office
The cultural overlap of branding, interiors, and social presence is nowhere more visible than in the workplaces of digital-native brands. Matilda Djerf’s Djerf Avenue office in Stockholm, designed by Studio Dorrian, reflects her Instagram persona with uncanny precision: soft woods, neutral tones, curated calm. The office is both a workplace and a set—architecture as backdrop, branding, and self-mythology.
This isn’t a one-off. Influencers, celebrities, and even start-ups are designing environments that can live comfortably in the digital eye. The architect’s new collaborator is no longer just the developer or the client, but the algorithm.
Designing for Likes, Not Legacy
This growing fixation on digital recognition has reshaped how buildings are valued. Success isn’t measured only by public use or long-term function—it’s measured by visibility. A project’s ability to go viral can determine its press coverage, funding, or cultural relevance.
But this comes at a cost. Architects face growing pressure to prioritize trend-driven aesthetics over contextual, sustainable, or socially embedded design. It’s a cycle that echoes fast fashion: buildings that age fast because they were never meant to last.
Sustainability as the New Status Symbol
Yet social media can do more than distract. When used intentionally, it can spotlight sustainable practices and amplify ethical design. Troye Sivan’s cork-ceilinged Melbourne home, featured in Architectural Digest, reached nearly 8 million viewers. The feature made cork—a once-niche eco material—a desirable choice.
Architectural Digest and celebrity home tours now operate as cultural gatekeepers, able to shift taste and values at scale. When sustainability trends enter the algorithm, they enter the mainstream.
Kanye West’s Yeezy Home project—prototyping affordable, igloo-shaped housing from low-cost, sustainable materials—is another example. While ambitious and often controversial, West’s ventures signal a broader movement: cultural icons using architecture to express values, not just aesthetic preferences.
Kim Kardashian’s collaboration with architects like Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma hints at a similar shift. Her homes, and the visibility they receive, become platforms for promoting minimalism, material consciousness, and cross-cultural appreciation.
When Media Shapes the Street
Pop culture’s influence isn’t limited to glossy publications or curated feeds. Shows like Shameless document gentrification in real time, showcasing how architecture reflects and responds to socio-economic shifts. Graffiti, decay, and vernacular design become aesthetic markers—later commercialized and absorbed into urban branding.
TikTok aesthetics have also reanimated old neighborhoods. The Mexican Catholic aesthetic—glorified by Mirror Palais and other fashion brands—has led to a romanticization of San Miguel de Allende’s historic architecture. Social media doesn’t just highlight what’s new; it reframes what’s old.
Grunge interiors, techno-brutalism, graffiti walls—these subcultures now shape material palettes and spatial branding. Gen Z might prefer a crumbling loft in the Lower East Side over the sleek sheen of Hudson Yards. These preferences, shaped by algorithmic exposure, influence which buildings get preserved, repurposed, or reimagined.
Conclusion: Toward an Architecture of Meaning
Pop culture and social media aren’t threats to architecture. But they are forces that need critical engagement. Architects can use these platforms to drive attention toward ethical design, elevate underrepresented histories, and spark conversations about the future of our cities.
The challenge is to avoid becoming passive participants in a visual economy that rewards speed over substance. The goal isn't to reject virality, but to ask what it's in service of. Can we build spaces that last and trend? Can we use the feed to feed better futures?
Architecture doesn’t have to be either serious or shareable. It can be both—if we choose to make it so.
