18 – Junkspace – Rem Koolhaas & the End of Architecture

A fuzzy empire of blur, a low grade purgatory, a perpetual Jacuzzi with millions of your best friends…

We're discussing Junkspace (2001), Rem Koolhaas's notoriously elliptical wander through the dystopian and formless morass of early 21st retail architecture that seems gradually to be devouring the city, and the world.

In keeping with the essay, the episode is radically unstructured, only barely makes sense, and is held together largely by hyperbole.

We discussed –
– Rem Koolhaas and OMA
– The books SMLXL and Delirious New York
– Exodus: The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture
– Frederic Jameson's review of Junkspace in NLR 21 (2003)
– Jameson's Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)
– Walter Benajmin's Passagenwerk or Arcades Project

Music –
'Ruca' and 'Agnes' from the album 'Teal' by Rod Hamilton
and 'Curiosity', 'Quisitive' and 'Biking in the Park' from the album 'Music for Podcasts' by Lee Rosevere; both from the Free Music Archive
Blue Gas 'Shadows From Nowhere' (1984)

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