more about Economy of Architecture / Architecture of Economy

Creativity, inventiveness, and knowledge are cornerstones of contemporary forms of production, a development which is being discussed internationally under the term ‘cognitive capitalism’. The main terms in this context are: immaterial labor, creative work, cognitive work, affective work, knowledge economy, and knowledge society. The role of inventiveness and knowledge production as ‘raw material’ of a new economic order is emerging against the backdrop of the rapid development of new information and communication technologies, the restructuring of ‘intellectual property’, and the transformation of knowledge into goods. – Yann Moulier-Boutang [1] 

In the book Cognitive Capitalism (2012) Yann Moulier-Boutang clarifies how, parallel to technological and economic developments, the structures and hierarchies of social spaces have shifted fundamentally, from the Fordist conditions of the disciplinary society (Michel Foucault, 1977 [2]) to the post-Fordist requirements of the control society (Gilles Deleuze, 1997 [3]). The spaces of cognitive capitalism materialize in accordance with algorithmically-defined criteria; the architecture of immaterial networks becomes a constituent factor for spatial production.

Departing from an analysis of the urban impacts of a globalized economy that uses architecture as assets and speculates with its temporalized value, halfway and our research partners Urban Subjects initiated a discourse on the question of property in relation to urban space. The city of Vancouver was chosen as a case study because rarely have the effects of private investment capital ever been translated so concretely, spatially and graphically, in the urban fabric. Generating an image of the city via the skyline, however, only represents the surface of an urban model in which the radical redefinition of the borders of a city archipelago become tangible.

In the predominant contemporary discourse on urban development and housing construction as a symptom of a post-political present, defined primarily by deregulation and investment-driven urban development, the problematic social impacts are usually projected upon an idea of the city whose conception of society is based on a classical understanding of individuality and subjectivity, whereby the economic (market) forces generally produce ever new forms of alienation. David Harvey (2012 [4]) and others repeatedly criticized the production of housing through debt-related financialization as a socially unjust and destabilizing factor for effects such as gentrification, segregation, and inequality. Here, however, the question arises whether there is another form of critique that brings another notion of (dividual) individuality into play, for it is precisely subjectivity itself which is deeply affected and yet completely embedded in contemporary forms of economy. The former “functional” division of the modern age—those properties to be sold and developed, on the one hand, and those subdivided into apartments and houses, on the other—is being successively augmented with other forms of division. Today the differences have been internalized, so to say, which can be seen, for instance, as an effect in the increasing mixture of work and life. In this divided subjectivity the roles intended for certain urban zones of the modern city are collapsing within the neoliberal imperative directed at the subject—to be flexible, adaptable, creative, and inventive in order to efficiently evolve different identities whenever it is required from a modulating market. These qualities—also of prime importance for the much-discussed “project-based city” (Luc Boltanski / Ève Chiapello, 2005 [5]), which is based upon relationships, networks, and mobility—form the structural framework of a dividual subjectivity within the post-political city.

The logic of the homogenization and totalization of the post-political city goes hand-in-hand with structurally embedded states of emergency: enclaves, heterotopias, islands that float in the homogenous space of urbanization. Just as the state of emergency or crisis has become a necessary and structural component of economy and the accompanying financialization, urban islands (e.g. closed communities, urban villages, special economic and duty-free zones, theme parks, etc.) are the realms in which the politics of inclusion and exclusion become crucial. Here a decisive factor is the “code”, which Deleuze writes about in his text “Postscript on Control Societies” (1997 [6]). In particular, the issue of access—which often manifests, for instance, in the digital information of credit cards—is of vital importance. The internalized division of the dividual subject is reflected in dividual spaces determined by modes of access.

This “economy of access” (Jeremy Rifkin, 2001 [7]) involves typically invisible borders and filters being built along totally new parameters of a dividual subjectivity. A key factor in this context is speculation on individual performance as an investment in life. Life itself becomes a speculative commodity, whose projection into the future produces resources in the here and now. As McKenzie Wark (2016) argued with reference to Randy Martin, for the mass production of goods it is no longer about assembling everything in one place. Financial engineering disassembles the production process and recombines its constituent parts. Both the individual home as well as the individual home owner become dividual slices of risk. They can be reassembled once again in derivatives: parts no longer part of a whole. The result:

Dividualization of economy in every magnitude. Commensurability and comparability must be established in order to valorize the dividual exchange. – Gerald Raunig [8]

A highly problematic side effect of this imminent dividual space is the rise of an exploitative economy that uses forms of temporary access to its own end. The research by Almazán/Tsukamoto (2006) and others reveals in detail how the post-political city can also benefit from those who stand on the fringe of societal consensus. It remains to be seen whether the fluid architectures of sharing are capable of accommodating the growing internalized differences and inequalities without eliminating the differences as a productive quality of a political space, which is dependent on the availability of the dimensions of dissent and agonism. But one aspect seems clear: The definitive dimension for urbanism will not be the dualism between public and private spaces, where the classic understanding of individuality once resided, but the hybrid zones of dividual spaces, where temporalities are managed.

[1] Moulier-Boutang, Yann. Cognitive Capitalism. Translated by Ed Emery. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.

[2] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Allen Lane, 1977.

[3] Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

[4] Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso, 2012.

[5] Boltanski, Luc, and Ève Chiapello. The New Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2005.

[6] Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

[7] Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Access. The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-for Experience. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001.

[8] Raunig, Gerald. Dividuum. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution. Translated by Aileen Derieg. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2016.