Portfolio | Design as Politics

Architecture and Economics

While organizations as occupy and documentaries like inside job point at bankers as the reason for our current economic crisis, the guys from Barclays Capital have now found the solution: let’s blame tall buildings! Their recently published skyscraper-index (pdf) shows the link between the construction of the world’s tallest building and an approaching financial crisis. The report -written in the 42th floor of a Hong Kong office building- states that skyscrapers are not only the ultimate symbol of capitalism, welfare and power, but also a monument of hubris and megalomania. The development of the world’s highest building, so they say,… Read More

Check this. One hundred dollar bills make perfect building material – you can more or less rebuild the World Trade Center out of the US national debt. Just imagine what happens when you change that into Zimbabwean dollars first.

Starting November 15th: Blame The Architect, a lecture series by Wouter Vanstiphout on the relationship between riots and the urban environment. In six one-hour lectures, addressing four different incidents of large-scale rioting in as many cities, an attempt will be made to dissect the complicated mix of social, economical and urban factors that all play a role in the buildup towards riots. See the poster below for dates and locations, and elsewhere on this website for a more extensive introduction on the topic.