"Junkspace" - Rem Koolhaas & the End of Architecture - AB+C 18

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)
See also:
AB+C 48 - Going Big! - OMA 1989 - • Going Big! - Rem Koolh...

[@starmanjesus5679]

‘the perpetual jacuzzi’ is the most appropriate image I have ever heard to synthesize this epoch, thanks again guys for the real pleasure I have listening to this podcast

[@about_buildings]

Thanks!

[@matteomarchese9771]

Great discussion, great observations, brilliant channel overall. You're actually helping me sort my ideas for my thesis, thanks for that. Also thanks for putting LCD soundsystem in the mix of references, couldn't be happier

[@michaelhunt2222]

Holy shit this is a good channel 👍

[@donnastonecipher5222]

I'm very much enjoying your podcast. Wondering, with this one, how (/if) Koolhaas's "junkspace" fundamentally differs from Marc Auge's "non-places"?

[@about_buildings]

It could be that it's the same subject from the p.o.v. of an architect rather than an anthropologist - a lot of junkspace seems to be about the resistance of these endless and formless interiors to architectural reasoning. As an architect, you generally pick up on the logic of a given plan quite quickly, and start to read the intended spatial hierachy or 'diagram'. I don't really know Auge's work v well though - what is his definition of 'non place' exactly?

[@donnastonecipher5222]

@@about_buildings Thank you for the architect’s perspective-very interesting! I had to thumb through my copy of Non-Places to get the exact definition: “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.” Airports are at the top of the list, as are shopping malls, hypermarchés, highways, hotel rooms, etc. I think that junkspace is a non-place, and non-places include junkspace, and that Koolhaas and Augé are identifying and naming a similar phenomenon (though I see that the architectural perspective is more "granular," as it were, with the dead-end passageways and such). Coming from a literary background, I'm familiar with Augé's theory, but Koolhaas's was new to me. Thanks again!

[@candymandan]

Glad you went back on that Libeskind comment rather quick. My oh my what a self-righteous crock of shit the entire deconstructivist architecture is. Interesting to see a podcast about architecture though, it is a surprisingly poorly discussed topic in the public, which is rather strange. Not to mention your audio-quality isn't awful, which is a nice change of pace for such a "niche" theme. Well, I'll keep on listening to this, you've got a new subscriber.

[@about_buildings]

thanks! glad you found us

[@nicholasjohnson479]

Birmingham UK, like other cities, has its malls and even a 'Resorts World'... this is very telling, I think. Our junkspaces are consumer-fuelled resorts where you're not supposed to stay, just visit and spend; the gangs of youths who loiter and gawp but don't buy are just tomorrow's junkies. I've never been but I imagine Florida to be a junkspace state. Take away the buck and these spaces are meaningless. Horrible.