Junkspace Author(s): Rem Koolhaas Source: October, Vol. 100, Obsolescence (Spring, 2002), pp. 175-190 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779098 . Accessed: 14/04/2014 10:51

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REM KOOLHAAS

LoganAirport: A World-ClassUpgrade for the Twenty-first Century -Late-TwentiethCentury Billboard

Rabbit is the new beef... Because we abhor the utilitarian,we have con- demned ourselvesto a lifelongimmersion in the arbitrary... LAX: welcoming- possiblyflesh-eating-orchids at the check-incounter... "Identity"is the newjunk food for the dispossessed, globalization's fodder for the disenfranchised ... If space-junkis the human debris thatlitters the universe,Junk-Space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet. The built (more about that later) product of modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace. Junkspace is what remainsafter modernization has run its course, or,more precisely,what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational program:to share the blessingsof science, universally.Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown... Althoughits individualparts are the outcome of brilliantinven- tions, lucidlyplanned by human intelligence,boosted by infinitecomputation, theirsum spells the end of Enlightenment,its resurrectionas farce,a low-grade purgatory...Junkspace is the sum total of our currentachievement; we have built more than did all previousgenerations put together,but somehowwe do not reg- isteron the same scales. We do not leave pyramids.According to a new gospel of ugliness,there is already more Junkspaceunder constructionin the twenty-first centurythan has survivedfrom the twentieth... It was a mistaketo inventmodern architecturefor the twentiethcentury. Architecture disappeared in the twentieth century;we have been reading a footnoteunder a microscope hoping it would turn into a novel; our concern for the masses has blinded us to People's Architecture.Junkspace seems an aberration,but it is the essence,the main thing... the productof an encounterbetween escalatorand air-conditioning,conceived in an incubatorof Sheetrock(all threemissing from the historybooks). Continuityis the essence ofJunkspace;it exploitsany inventionthat enables expansion,deploys the infrastructureof seamlessness:escalator, air-conditioning, sprinkler, fire shutter, hot-aircurtain ...It is alwaysinterior, so extensivethat you rarelyperceive limits; it promotes disorientation by any means (mirror, polish, echo) . . . Junkspace is

OCTOBER 100, Spring2002, pp. 175-190. ? 2002 RemKoolhaas.

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sealed, held together not by structurebut by skin, like a bubble. Gravityhas remained constant,resisted by the same arsenal since the beginningof time;but air-conditioning-invisiblemedium, therefore unnoticed-has trulyrevolutionized architecture.Air-conditioning has launched the endless building. If architecture separates buildings,air-conditioning unites them. Air-conditioninghas dictated mutantregimes of organizationand coexistencethat leave architecturebehind. A single shopping center is now the workof generationsof space planners, repair- men, and fixers,like in the Middle Ages; air-conditioningsustains our cathedrals. (All architectsmay unwittinglybe workingon the same building,so far separate, but with hidden receptors that will eventuallymake it cohere.) Because it costs money,is no longerfree, conditioned space inevitablybecomes conditionalspace; sooner or laterall conditionalspace turnsinto Junkspace ... When we thinkabout space, we have onlylooked at its containers.As ifspace itselfis invisible,all theory for the productionof space is based on an obsessivepreoccupation with its oppo- site: substance and objects, i.e., architecture.Architects could never explain space; Junkspaceis our punishmentfor theirmystifications. O.K., let's talkabout space then. The beauty of airports,especially after each upgrade. The lusterof renovations.The subtletyof the shopping center.Let's explore public space, dis- cover casinos, spend time in theme parks ... Junkspace is the body double of space, a territoryof impaired vision, limited expectation, reduced earnestness. Junkspaceis a Bermuda Triangleof concepts,an abandoned petri dish: it cancels distinctions,undermines resolve, confuses intention with realization.It replaces hierarchywith accumulation, composition with addition. More and more, more is more. Junkspace is overripe and undernourishingat the same time, a colossal securityblanket that covers the earth in a strangleholdof seduction...Junkspace is like being condemned to a perpetualJacuzzi with millions of your best friends ... A fuzzyempire of blur,it fuseshigh and low,public and private,straight and bent, bloated and starvedto offera seamless patchworkof the permanentlydisjointed. Seeminglyan apotheosis,spatially grandiose, the effectof its richnessis a terminal hollowness,a vicious parodyof ambition thatsystematically erodes the credibility of building,possibly forever ... Space was created by piling matteron top of mat- ter, cemented to form a solid new whole. Junkspace is additive, layered, and lightweight,not articulatedin differentparts but subdivided,quartered the waya carcass is tornapart-individual chunkssevered from a universalcondition. There are no walls,only partitions, shimmering membranes frequently covered in mirror or gold. Structuregroans invisiblyunderneath decoration, or worse,has become ornamental; small, shiny,space frames support nominal loads, or huge beams deliver cyclopic burdens to unsuspecting destinations . . . The arch, once the workhorseof structures,has become the depleted emblem of "community,"wel- comingan infinityof virtualpopulations to nonexistenttheres. Where it is absent, it is simplyapplied-mostly in stucco-as ornamentalafterthought on hurriedly erected superblocks.Junkspace's iconography is 13 percent Roman, 8 percent Bauhaus and 7 percentDisney (neck and neck), 3 percentArt Nouveau, followed

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closely by Mayan ... Like a substance that could have condensed in any other form,Junkspace is a domain of feigned,simulated order,a kingdom of morph- ing. Its specific configurationis as fortuitousas the geometryof a snowflake. Patternsimply repetition or ultimatelydecipherable rules;Junkspace is beyond measure, beyond code ... Because it cannot be grasped, Junkspace cannot be remembered.It is flamboyantyet unmemorable, like a screen saver;its refusalto freeze ensures instantamnesia. Junkspace does not pretend to create perfection, only interest.Its geometries are unimaginable,only makable. Although strictly nonarchitectural,it tends to the vaulted,to the Dome. Some sectionsseem to be devoted to utter inertness,others in perpetual rhetorical turmoil: the deadest resides next to the most hysterical.Themes cast a pall of arresteddevelopment over interiorsas big as the Pantheon, spawningstillbirths in everycorner. The aesthetic is Byzantine,gorgeous, and dark, splinteredinto thousands of shards, all visible at the same time: a quasi-panoptical universe in which all contents rearrangethemselves in splitseconds around the dizzyeye of the beholder.Murals used to show idols;Junkspace's modules are dimensioned to carrybrands; myths can be shared, brands husband aura at the mercyof focus groups. Brands in Junkspaceperform the same role as black holes in the universe:they are essences through which meaning disappears . . . The shiniest surfaces in the history of mankindreflect humanity at its mostcasual. The more we inhabitthe palatial, the more we seem to dress down. A stringentdress code-last spasm of etiquette?- governs access to Junkspace: shorts,sneakers, sandals, shell suit, fleece,jeans, parka, backpack. As if the People suddenly accessed the private quarters of a dictator,Junkspace is best enjoyed in a state of postrevolutionary gawking. Polarities have merged-there is nothing left between desolation and frenzy. Neon signifiesboth the old and the new; interiorsrefer to the Stone and Space Age at the same time. Like the deactivatedvirus in an inoculation,Modern archi- tectureremains essential, but onlyin its most sterilemanifestation, High Tech (it seemed so dead only a decade ago!). It exposes what previous generationskept under wraps:structures emerge like springsfrom a mattress;exit stairsdangle in a didactic trapeze; probes thrustinto space to deliverlaboriously what is in fact omnipresent,free air; acres of glass hang fromspidery cables, tautlystretched skinsenclose flaccidnonevents. Transparency only reveals everything in whichyou cannot partake.At the strokeof midnightit all mayrevert to Taiwanese Gothic; in three years it may segue into Nigerian Sixties, Norwegian Chalet, or default Christian.Earthlings now live in a kindergartengrotesque.. .Junkspacethrives on design, but design dies in Junkspace. There is no form,only proliferation... Regurgitationis the new creativity;instead of creation,we honor, cherish,and embrace manipulation . . . Superstrings of graphics, transplanted emblems of franchise and sparkling infrastructuresof light, LEDs, and video describe an authorlessworld beyond anyone's claim, alwaysunique, utterlyunpredictable, yet intenselyfamiliar. Junkspace is hot (or suddenlyarctic); fluorescentwalls, folded like melting stained glass, generate additional heat to raise the temperatureof

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Junkspaceto levels at whichyou could cultivateorchids. Pretending histories left and right, its contents are dynamic yet stagnant, recycled or multiplied as in cloning: formssearch forfunction like hermitcrabs looking for a vacant shell ... Junkspacesheds architectureslike a reptile sheds skins,is reborn everyMonday morning.In previous building,materiality was based on a final state that could only be modifiedat the expense of partial destruction.At the exact momentthat our culturehas abandoned repetitionand regularityas repressive,building materials have become more and more modular,unitary, and standardized;substance now comes predigitized . . . As the module becomes smaller and smaller,its status become that of a crypto-pixel.With enormous difficulty-budget,argument, negotiation, deformation-irregularity and uniqueness are constructed from identical elements.Instead of tryingto wrestorder fromchaos, the picturesqueis nowwrested from the homogenized,the singularliberated from the standardized... Architectsthought of Junkspace first and named it Megastructure,the finalsolu- tion to transcendtheir huge impasse. Like multipleBabels, huge superstructures would last through eternity,teeming with impermanentsubsystems that would mutate over time,beyond theircontrol. In Junkspace,the tables are turned:it is subsystemonly, without superstructure, orphaned particlesin search of a frame- work or pattern. All materialization is provisional: cutting,bending, tearing, coating: constructionhas acquired a new softness,like tailoring... The joint is no longer a problem, an intellectual issue: transitional moments are defined by stapling and taping, wrinklybrown bands barely maintain the illusion of an unbroken surface; verbs unknown and unthinkable in architecturalhistory- clamp, stick,fold, dump, glue, shoot, double, fuse-have become indispensable. Each element performsits task in negotiated isolation. Where as detailing once suggestedthe coming together,possibly forever, of disparatematerials, it is now a transientcoupling, waiting to be undone, unscrewed,a temporaryembrace witha high probabilityof separation;no longerthe orchestratedencounter of difference, but the abruptend of a system,a stalemate.Only the blind,reading its faultlines with their fingertips,will ever understandJunkspace's histories . . . While whole millenniaworked in favorof permanence,axialities, relationships, and proportion, the programofJunkspace is escalation. Instead of development,it offersentropy. Because it is endless, it alwaysleaks somewherein Junkspace;in the worstcase, monumentalashtrays catch intermittentdrops in a graybroth ...When did time stop movingforward, begin to spool in everydirection, like a tape spinningout of control?Since the introductionof Real TimeTM?Change has been divorcedfrom the idea of improvement. There is no progress; like a crab on LSD, culture staggers endlesslysideways ... The average contemporarylunch box is a micro- cosm ofJunkspace:a ferventsemantics of health-slabs of eggplant, topped by thick layers of goat cheese-canceled by a colossal cookie at the bottom ... Junkspaceis drainingand is drained in return.Everywhere inJunkspace there are seatingarrangements, ranges of modularchairs, even couches, as ifthe experience Junkspaceoffers its consumersis significantlymore exhaustingthan any previous

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spatial sensation; in its most abandoned stretches,you find buffets:utilitarian tables draped in white or black sheets, perfunctoryassemblies of caffeineand calories-cottage cheese, muffins,unripe grapes-notional representationsof plenty,without horn and withoutplenty. Each Junkspaceis connected,sooner or later, to bodily functions:wedged between stainless-steelpartitions sit rows of groaningRomans, denim togas bunched around theirhuge sneakers... Because it is so intenselyconsumed, Junkspace is fanaticallymaintained, the night shift undoing the damage of the day shiftin an endless Sisyphean replay. As you recoverfrom Junkspace, Junkspace recovers from you: between 2 and 5 A.M.,yet anotherpopulation, this one heartlesslycasual and appreciablydarker, is mopping, hovering,sweeping, toweling, resupplying.. .Junkspace does not inspireloyalty in its cleaners ...Dedicated to instantgratification, Junkspace accommodates seeds of futureperfection; a language of apology is woventhrough its textureof canned euphoria; "pardon our appearance" signs or miniatureyellow "sorry" billboards markongoing patches of wetness,announce momentarydiscomfort in returnfor imminentshine, the allure of improvement.Somewhere, workers sink on their knees to repairfaded sections,as ifin a prayer,or half-disappearin ceilingvoids to negotiate elusivemalfunctions, as if in confession.All surfacesare archaeological, superpositionsof different"periods" (what do you call the moment a particular type of wall-to-wallcarpet was current?)-as you note when they're torn ... Traditionally,typology implies demarcation, the definitionof a singular model that excludes other arrangements.Junkspace representsa reverse typologyof cumulative,approximative identity, less about kind than about quantity.But form- lessness is still form, the formlessalso a typology. . . Take the dump, where successive trucks discharge their loads to form a heap, whole in spite of the randomnessof its contentsand its fundamentalshapelessness, or thatof the tent- envelope thatassumes differentshapes to accommodatevariable interiorvolumes. Or the vague crotchesof the new generation.Junkspace can eitherbe absolutely chaotic or frighteninglyaseptic-like a best-seller-overdetermined and indeterminateat the same time. There is somethingstrange about ballrooms,for instance:huge wastelandskept column-freefor ultimate flexibility. Because you've neverbeen invitedto thatkind of event,you have neverseen them in use; you've onlyseen thembeing preparedwith chilling precision: a relentlessgrid of circular tables, extending toward a distant horizon, their diameters preempting communication;a dais big enough for the politburoof a totalitarianstate, wings announcing as yetunimagined surprises-acres of organizationto supportfuture drunkenness,disarray, and disorder.Or car shows.. .Junkspaceis oftendescribed as a space of flows,but thatis a misnomer;flows depend on disciplinedmovement, bodies that cohere. Junkspace is a web without a spider; although it is an architectureof the masses,each trajectoryis strictlyunique. Its anarchyis one of the last tangibleways in whichwe experience freedom.It is a space of collision,a container of atoms, busy, not dense . . . There is a special way of moving in Junkspace, at the same time aimless and purposeful. It is an acquired culture.

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Junkspacefeatures the tyrannyof the oblivious: sometimesan entireJunkspace comes unstuckthrough the nonconformityof one of its members;a single citizen of an another culture-a refugee,a mother-can destabilizean entireJunkspace, hold it to a rustic'sransom, leaving an invisibleswath of obstructionin his/her wake, a deregulationeventually communicated to its furthestextremities. Where movementbecomes synchronized,it curdles: on escalators, near exits, parking machines,automated tellers.Sometimes, under duress,individuals are channeled in a flow,pushed througha single door or forced to negotiate the gap between two temporaryobstacles (an invalid'sbleeping chariotand a Christmastree): the manifestill will such narrowingprovokes mocks the notion of flows.Flows in Junkspace lead to disaster: department stores at the beginning of sales; the stampedes triggeredby warringcompartments of soccer fans; dead bodies piling up in frontof the locked emergencydoors of a disco-evidence of the awkwardfit between the portals of Junkspaceand the narrowcalibrations of the old world. The younginstinctively avoid the Dante-esque manipulations/containersto which Junkspacehas condemned theirelders in perpetuity.Within the meta-playground ofJunkspaceexist smaller playgrounds, Junkspace for children (usually in the least desirable square footage): sections of sudden miniaturization-oftenunderneath staircases,always near dead ends-and assemblies of underdimensionedplastic structures-slides, seesaws, swings-shunned by their intended audience are turnedinto aJunknichefor the old, the lost, the forgotten,the insane ... the last hiccup of humanism ... Trafficis Junkspace,from airspace to the subway;the entire highwaysystem is Junkspace, a vastpotential utopia clogged by its users,as you notice when they'vefinally disappeared on vacation... Like radioactivewaste, Junkspace has an insidious half-life.Aging in Junkspace is nonexistentor cata- strophic; sometimes an entire Junkspace-a department store, a nightclub,a bachelor pad-turns into a slum overnightwithout warning: wattage diminishes imperceptibly,letters drop out of signs, air-conditioningunits startdripping, cracks appear as if fromotherwise unregistered earthquakes; sections rot, are no longer viable, but remainjoined to the flesh of the main body via gangrenous passages. Judgingthe built presumed a static condition; now each architecture embodies opposite conditionssimultaneously: old and new,permanent and tempo- rary, flourishing and at risk . . Sections undergo an Alzheimer's-like deterioration as others are upgraded. Because Junkspace is endless, it is never closed . . Renovation and restorationwere procedures that took place in your absence; now you're a witness,a reluctant participant... Seeing Junkspace in conversionis like inspectingan unmade bed, someone else's. Say an airportneeds more space. In the past, new terminalswere added, each more or less characteristic of its own age, leaving the old ones as a readable record, evidence of progress. Since passengers have definitivelydemonstrated their infinitemalleability, the idea of rebuildingon the spot has gained currency.Travelators are throwninto reverse,signs taped, potted palms (or verylarge corpses) covered in body bags. Screens of taped Sheetrock segregate two populations: one wet, one dry,one

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hard, one flabby,one cold, one overheated. Half the population produces new space; the more affluenthalf consumes old space. To accommodate a nether world of manual labor, the concourse suddenly turns into Casbah: improvised locker rooms, coffee breaks, smoking,even real campfires. . The ceiling is a crumpledplate like the Alps; gridsof unstable tiles alternatewith monogrammed sheets of black plastic, improbablypunctured by grids of crystalchandeliers ... Metal ducts are replaced by breathingtextiles. Gaping joints reveal vast ceiling voids (formercanyons of asbestos?),beams, ducting,rope, cable, insulation,fire- proofing,string; tangled arrangementssuddenly exposed to daylight.Impure, tortured, and complex, they exist only because they were never consciously plotted.The flooris a patchwork:different textures-concrete, hairy, heavy, shiny, plastic,metallic, muddy-alternate randomly, as ifdedicated to differentspecies ... The ground is no more. There are too manyraw needs to be realized on onlyone plane. The absolutehorizontal has been abandoned. Transparencyhas disappeared, to be replaced by a dense crustof provisionaloccupation: kiosks,carts, strollers, palms, fountains,bars, sofas,trolleys ... Corridorsno longer simplylink A to B, but have become "destinations."Their tenant life tends to be short: the most stagnantwindows, the most perfunctorydresses, the most implausibleflowers. All perspectiveis gone, as in a rainforest(itself disappearing, they keep saying...). The formerlystraight is coiled into evermorecomplex configurations.Only a perverse modernist choreography can explain the twists and turns, the ascents and descents, the sudden reversals that comprise the typical path from check-in (misleadingname) to the apron of the average contemporaryairport. Because we never reconstructor question the absurdityof these enforced ddrives,we meekly submit to grotesque journeys past perfume, asylum-seekers, building site, underwear, oysters,pornography, cell phone-incredible adventures for the brain, the eye, the nose, the tongue,the womb,the testicles... There was once a polemic about the rightangle and the straightline; now the ninetiethdegree has become one among many.In fact,remnants of formergeometries create ever new havoc, offeringforlorn nodes of resistancethat create unstable eddies in newly opportunisticflows... Who would dare claim responsibilityfor this sequence? The idea that a professiononce dictated, or at least presumed to predict, people's movementsnow seems laughable, or worse: unthinkable.Instead of design,there is calculation:the more erraticthe path,eccentric the loops, hidden the blueprint, efficientthe exposure, the more inevitablethe transaction.In this war,graphic designersare the greatturncoats: Where once signage promisedto deliveryou to where you wanted to be, it now obfuscates and entangles you in a thicket of cuteness thatforces you past unwanteddetours, turns you back when you're lost. Postmodernismadds a crumple-zoneof viral pochethat fracturesand multiplies the endless frontlineof display,a peristalticshrink-wrap crucial to all commercial exchange. Trajectories are launched as ramp, turn horizontal without any warning,intersect, fold down, suddenlyemerge on a vertiginousbalcony above a large void. Fascism minus dictator.From the sudden dead end where you were

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dropped by a monumental,granite staircase, an escalatortakes you to an invisible destination, facing a provisional vista made of plaster,inspired by forgettable sources. (There is no datum level; you always inhabit a sandwich. "Space" is scooped out ofJunkspaceas froma soggyblock of ice creamthat has languishedtoo long in the freezer:cylindrical, cone-shaped, more or less spherical,whatever... ) Toilet groups mutate into Disney Stores then morph to become meditation centers: Successive transformationsmock the.word "plan." The plan is a radar screen where individual pulses survivefor unpredictable periods of time in a Bacchanalian free-for-all... In this standoffbetween the redundant and the inevitable,a plan would actuallymake mattersworse, would drive you to instant despair.Only the diagramgives a bearable version.There is zero loyalty-and zero tolerance-toward configuration,no "original"condition; architecture has turned into a time-lapsesequence to reveala "permanentevolution." ... The onlycertainty is conversion-continuous-followed, in rare cases, by "restoration,"the process thatclaims ever new sectionsof historyas extensionsofJunkspace. History corrupts, absolute historycorrupts absolutely. Color and matterare eliminatedfrom these bloodless grafts:the bland has become the only meetingground for the old and the new... Can the bland be amplified?The featurelessbe exaggerated?Through height? Depth? Length? Variation? Repetition? Sometimes not overload but its opposite, an absolute absence of detail, generatesJunkspace. A voided condition of frighteningsparseness, shockingproof that so much can be organized by so little. Laughable emptinessinfuses the respectfuldistance or tentativeembrace thatstarchitects maintain in the presence of the past, authenticor not. Invariably, the primordial decision is to leave the original intact; the formerlyresidual is declaredthe newessence, the focusof the intervention.As a firststep, the substance to be preserved is wrapped in a thick pack of commerce and catering-like a reluctantskier pushed downhillby responsible minders. To showrespect, symmetries are maintained and helplessly exaggerated; ancient building techniques are resurrectedand honed to irrelevantshine, quarries reopened to excavate the "same" stone, indiscreet donor names chiseled prominentlyin the meekest of typefaces;the courtyardcovered by a masterful,structural "filigree"-emphatically uncompetitive-so thatcontinuity may be establishedwith the "rest"ofJunkspace (abandoned galleries, display slums,Jurassic concepts... ). Conditioning is applied; filtereddaylight reveals vast, antiseptic expanses of monumentalreticence and makes them come alive, vibrantas a computer rendering... The curse of public space: latent fascism safelysmothered in signage, stools, sympathy... Junkspaceis postexistential;it makesyou uncertainwhere you are, obscureswhere you go, undoes whereyou were. Who do you thinkyou are? Who do you want to be? (Note to architects:You thought that you could ignore Junkspace, visit it surreptitiously,treat it with condescending contempt or enjoy it vicariously... because you could not understand it, you've thrownaway the keys... But now your own architecture is infected, has become equally smooth, all-inclusive, continuous,warped, busy, atrium-ridden ...) JunkSignatureTMis the new architec-

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ture: the formermegalomania of a profession contracted to manageable size, Junkspaceminus its savingvulgarity. Anything stretched-limousines, body parts, planes-turns into Junkspace, its original concept abused. Restore, rearrange, reassemble, revamp,renovate, revise, recover, redesign, return-the Parthenon marbles-redo, respect, rent: verbs that start with re-produce Junkspace ... Junkspace will be our tomb. Half of mankind pollutes to produce, the other pollutes to consume. The combined pollution of all Third Worldcars, motorbikes, trucks,buses, sweatshops pales into insignificancecompared to the heat generated byJunkspace.Junkspace is political: It depends on the centralremoval of the crit- ical facultyin the name of comfortand pleasure. Politicshas become manifestoby Photoshop, seamless blueprintsof the mutuallyexclusive, arbitrated by opaque NGOs. Comfortis the newJustice.Entire miniature states now adoptJunkspaceas political program, establish regimes of engineered disorientation, instigate a politics of systematicdisarray. Not exactly"anything goes"; in fact,the secret of Junkspaceis thatit is both promiscuousand repressive:as the formlessproliferates, the formalwithers, and withit all rules,regulations, recourse ... Babel has been misunderstood.Language is not the problem,just the new frontierof Junkspace. Mankind,torn by eternaldilemmas, the impasseof seeminglyendless debates,has launched a new language that straddles unbridgeable divides like a fragile designer'sfootbridge ... coined a proactivewave of new oxymoronsto suspend former incompatibility: life/style,reality/TV, world/music, museum/store, food/court, health/care, waiting/lounge. Naming has replaced class struggle, sonorous amalgamationsof status,high-concept, and history.Through acronym, unusual importation,suppressing letters, or fabricationof nonexistentplurals, theyaim to shed meaning in returnfor a spacious new roominess... Junkspace knowsall youremotions, all yourdesires. It is the interiorof Big Brother'sbelly. It preempts people's sensations. It comes with a sound track, smell, captions; it blatantlyproclaims how it wants to be read: rich, stunning,cool, huge, abstract, "minimal,"historical. It sponsors a collective of brooding consumers in surly anticipation of their next spend, a mass of refractoryperiods caught in a Thousand Year Reign of Razzmatazz, a paroxysmof prosperity.The subject is stripped of privacyin returnfor access to a credit nirvana.You are complicitin the tracingof the fingerprintseach of your transactionsleaves; theyknow every- thingabout you, except who you are. Emissariesof Junkspace pursue you in the formerlyimpervious privacy of the bedroom: the minibar,private fax machines, pay-TVoffering compromised pornography,fresh plastic veils wrapping toilets seats,courtesy condoms: miniature profit centers coexist with your bedside bible ... Junkspacepretends to unite, but it actuallysplinters. It creates communitiesnot out of shared interest or free association, but out of identical statistics and unavoidable demographics,an opportunisticweave of vestedinterests. Each man, woman, and child is individuallytargeted, tracked, split offfrom the rest... Fragments come together at "security" only, where a grid of video screens disappointinglyreassembles individual frames into a banalized, utilitariancubism

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that revealsJunkspace's overall coherence to the dispassionate glare of barely trainedguards: video-ethnography in its bruteform. Just as Junkspaceis unstable, its actual ownership is foreverbeing passed on in parallel disloyalty.Junkspace happens spontaneouslythrough natural corporate exuberance-the unfettered play of the market-or is generated throughthe combined actions of temporary "czars" with long records of three-dimensionalphilanthropy, bureaucrats (often former leftists) that optimistically sell offvast tracts of waterfront,former hippodromes,military bases and abandoned airfieldsto developers or real-estate moguls who can accommodate any deficit in futuristicbalances, or through Default PreservationTM(the maintenance of historical complexes that nobody wants but that the Zeitgeisthas declared sacrosanct). As its scale mushrooms- rivals and even exceeds that of the Public-its economy becomes more inscrutable.Its financingis a deliberatehaze, clouding opaque deals, dubious tax breaks,unusual incentives,exemptions, tenuous legalities,transferred air rights, joined properties,special zoning districts,public-private complicities. Funded by bonds, lottery,subsidy, charity, grant: An erraticflow of yen, Euros, and dollars createsfinancial envelopes thatare as fragileas theircontents. Because of a struc- tural shortfall,a fundamentaldeficit, a contingentbankruptcy, each square inch becomes a grasping,needy surface dependent on covert or overt support, dis- count, compensation and fund-raising.For culture,"engraved donor bricks";for everythingelse: cash, rentals, leases, franchises,the underpinning of brands. Junkspaceexpands withthe economybut its footprintcannot contract-when it is no longer needed, it thins. Because of its tenuous viability,Junkspace has to swallowmore and more programto survive;soon, we will be able to do anything anywhere.We will have conquered place. At the end ofJunkspace,the Universal? Through Junkspace, old aura is transfusedwith new luster to spawn sudden commercialviability: Barcelona amalgamatedwith the Olympics,Bilbao withthe Guggenheim,Forty-second Street with Disney. God is dead, the author is dead, historyis dead, only the architectis leftstanding.., .an insultingevolutionary joke ... A shortage of mastershas not stopped a proliferationof masterpieces. "Masterpiece"has become a definitivesanction, a semantic space that saves the object fromcriticism, leaves its qualities unproven,its performanceuntested, its motivesunquestioned. Masterpieceis no longeran inexplicablefluke, a roll of the dice, but a consistent typology:its mission to intimidate,most of its exterior surfacesbent, huge percentagesof its square footagedysfunctional, its centrifugal components barely held together by the pull of the atrium, dreading the imminentarrival of forensicaccounting... The more indeterminatethe city,the more specificits Junkspace; all ofJunkspace'sprototypes are urban-the Roman Forum,the Metropolis;it is onlytheir reverse synergy that makes themsuburban, simultaneouslyswollen and shrunk.Junkspace reduces what is urban to urbanity... Instead of public life,Public SpaceTM:what remains of the cityonce the unpre- dictable has been removed . . . Space for "honoring," "sharing," "caring," "grieving,"and "healing"... civilityimposed byan overdoseof serif... In the third

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Millennium, Junkspace will assume responsibilityfor pleasure and religion, exposure and intimacy,public life and privacy.Inevitably, the death of God (and the author) has spawned orphaned space; Junkspaceis authorless,yet surprisingly authoritarian... At the moment of its greatestemancipation, humankind is sub- jected to the most dictatorialscripts: from the pushyoration of the waiterto the answeringgulags on the other end of the telephone,the safetyinstructions on the airplane, more and more insistentperfumes, mankind is browbeateninto submit- ing to the most harshly engineered plotline ... The chosen theater of megalomania-the dictatorial-is no longer politics,but entertainment.Through Junkspace,entertainment organizes hermeticregimes of ultimateexclusion and concentration: concentration gambling, concentration golf, concentration convention,concentration movie, concentrationculture, concentration holiday. Entertainmentis like watchinga once-hotplanet cool off;its major inventionsare ancient: the movingimage, the roller coaster,recorded sound, cartoons,clowns, dinosaurs, news, war. Except for celebrities-of which there is a dramatic shortage-we have added nothing,just reconfigured.Corpotainment is a galaxy in contraction,forced to go throughthe motions by ruthlessCopernican laws. The secretof corporateaesthetics was the powerof elimination,the celebrationof the efficient,the eradicationof excess: abstractionas camouflage,the search fora Corporate Sublime. On popular demand, organized beauty has become warm, humanist,inclusivist, arbitrary, poetic, and unthreatening:water is pressurized throughvery small holes, then forcedinto rigoroushoops; straightpalms are bent into grotesque poses, air is burdened with added oxygen-as if only forcing malleable substancesinto the most drasticcontortions maintains control, satisfies the drive to get rid of surprise.Not canned laughter,but canned euphoria... Color has disappeared to dampen the resultingcacophony, and is used only as cue: relax, enjoy, be well, we're united in sedation . . . Why can't we tolerate strongersensations? Dissonance? Awkwardness?Genius? Anarchy?... Junkspace heals, or at least thatis the assumptionof manyhospitals. We thoughtthe hospital was unique-a universethat identifiedby its smell-but now thatwe are used to universal conditioningwe recognize it was merelya prototype;all Junkspace is defined by its smell. Often heroic in size, planned with the last adrenaline of modernism'sgrand inspiration,we have made them (too) human; life or death decisions are taken in spaces that are relentlesslyfriendly, littered with fading bouquets, emptycoffee cups, and yesterday'spapers. You used to face death in appropriate cells; now your nearest are huddled together in atriums. A bold datum line is establishedon everyvertical surface, dividing the infirmaryin two: above an endless humanistscroll of "color,"loved ones, children'ssunsets, signage, and art.., .below a utilitarianzone for defacementand disinfectant,anticipated collision, scratch, spill, and smudge ...Junkspace is space as vacation; there once was a relationshipbetween leisure and work,a biblical dictate that divided our weeks, organized public life. Now we work harder,marooned in a never-ending casual Friday... The officeis the nextfrontier ofJunkspace. Since you can workat

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home, the officeaspires to the domestic;because you stillneed a life,it simulates the city.Junkspace featuresthe officeas the urban home, a meeting-boudoir: desksbecome sculptures,the work-flooris lit byintimate downlights. Monumental partitions, kiosks, mini-Starbuckson interior plazas: a Post-ituniverse: "team memory,""information persistence"; futile hedges againstthe universalforgetting of the unmemorable,the oxymoronas missionstatement. Witness corporate agit- prop: the CEO's suite becomes "leadership collective,"wired to all the world's other Junkspace, real or imagined. Espace becomes E-space. The twenty-first centurywill bring "intelligent"Junkspace: on a big digital "dashboard": sales, CNNNYSENASDAQC-SPAN,anything that goes up or down, fromgood to bad, presented in real time like the automotive-theorycourse that complements drivinglessons ... Globalizationturns language intoJunkspace. We are stuckin a speech-doldrums.The ubiquity of English is Pyrrhic:now that we all speak it, nobody remembersits use. The collective bastardizationof English is our most impressiveachievement; we have broken its back with ignorance, accent, slang, jargon, tourism,outsourcing, and multitasking... we can make it sayanything we want,like a speech dummy... Through the retrofittingof language, thereare too fewplausible words left;our most creativehypotheses will never be formulated, discoveries will remain unmade, concepts unlaunched, philosophies muffled, nuances miscarried... We inhabit sumptuousPotemkin suburbs of weasel termi- nologies. Aberrantlinguistic ecologies sustain virtualsubjects in their claim to legitimacy, help them survive . . . Language is no longer used to explore, define, express, or to confrontbut to fudge, blur,obfuscate, apologize, and comfort... it stakesclaims, assigns victimhood, preempts debate, admitsguilt, fosters consen- sus. Entire organizationsand/or professionsimpose a descent into the linguistic equivalent of hell: condemned to a word-limbo,inmates wrestlewith words in ever-descendingspirals of pleading, lying,bargaining, flattening.. . a Satanic orchestrationof the meaningless ... Intended for the interior,Junkspace can easily engulfa whole city.First, it escapes fromits containers-semantic orchids that needed hothouse protectionemerging with surprising robustness-then the outdoorsitself is converted:the streetis paved more luxuriously,shelters proliferate carryingincreasingly dictatorial messages, trafficis calmed, crime eliminated. Then Junkspace spreads like a forest fire in L.A. . . . The global progress of Junkspacerepresents a finalManifest Destiny: the Worldas public space ... All of the resurrectedemblems and recycledambers of the formerlypublic need new pastures. A new vegetal is corralled for its thematic efficiency.The outing of Junkspace has triggered the professionalizationof denaturing, a benign eco- fascismthat positions a rare survivingSiberian tigerin a forestof slot machines, near Armani,amid a twistedarboreal Baroque ... Outside, between the casinos, fountainsproject entire Stalinistbuildings of liquid, ejaculated in a split second, hovering momentarily,then withdrawingwith an amnesiac competency... Air, water,wood: All are enhanced to produce HyperecologyTM,a parallel Walden, a new rainforest.Landscape has become Junkspace,foliage as spoilage: Trees are

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tortured,lawns cover human manipulations like thick pelts, or even toupees, sprinklerswater according to mathematicaltimetables ... Seeminglyat the oppo- site end of Junkspace,the golf course is, in fact,its conceptual double: empty, serene, free of commercialdebris. The relativeevacuation of the golf course is achieved by the furthercharging of Junkspace. The methods of theirdesign and realizationare similar:erasure, tabula rasa, reconfiguration.Junkspace turns into biojunk; ecology turns into ecospace. Ecology and economy have bonded in Junkspace as ecolomy. The economy has become Faustian; hyperdevelopment depends on artificialunderdevelopment; a huge global bureaucracy is in the makingto settle,in a colossal yin/yang,the balance betweenJunkspace and golf, between the scraped and the 'scaped, trading the right to despoil for the obligation to create steroidrainforests in Costa Rica. Oxygen banks,Fort Knoxes of chlorophyll,eco-reserves as a blank check for furtherpollution. Junkspace is rewritingthe apocalypse; we may die of oxygen poisoning... In the past, the complexities of Junkspace were compensated for by the stark rawness of its adjunct infrastructures:parking garages, fillingstations, distribution centers routinelydisplaying a monumentalpurity that was the originalaim of modernism. Now, massive injections of lyricismhave enabled an infrastructure-the one domain previouslyimmune to design,taste, or the marketplace-to join the world of Junkspace, and forJunkspace to extend its manifestations under the sky. Railwaystations unfold like iron butterflies,airports glisten like cyclopic dew- drops, bridges span often negligiblebanks like grotesquelyenlarged versionsof the harp. To each rivuletits own Calatrava. (Sometimes when there is a strong wind, this new generation of instrumentsshakes as if being played by a giant,or maybe a God, and mankind shudders ... ) Junkspace can be airborne, bring malaria to Sussex; 300 anopheline mosquitoes arriveeach day at GDG and GTW withability, theoretically, to infecteight to twentylocals in a three-mileradius, a hazard exacerbated by the average passenger'sreluctance, in a misplaced gasp of quasi-autonomy,to be disinfectedonce he or she has buckled up for the return journey from the dead end of the tourist destination. Airports, provisional accommodationfor those going elsewhere,inhabited by assemblies united onlyby the imminence of their dissolution, have turned into consumption gulags, democraticallydistributed across the globe to give everycitizen an equal chance of admission... MXP looks as if all of the leftoversof East Germany'sreconstruc- tion-whatever was needed to undo the deprivationsof Communism-have been hurriedlybulldozed togetheraccording to a vaguelyrectangular blueprint to form a botched sequence of deformed,inadequate spaces (apparentlywilled into being by the currentrulers of Europe, who extortlimitless Euros fromthe community's regional funds,causing endless delays for its duped taxpayerstoo busy on cell phones to notice). DFW is composed of three elements only,repeated ad infini- tum, nothing else: one kind of beam, one kind of brick, one kind of tile, all coated in the same color-is it teal? Rust? Tobacco? With symmetriesscaled beyond any possibilityof recognition,the endless curve of its terminalsforces its

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users to enact relativitytheory in theirquest forthe gate. Its dropoffis the seem- inglyharmless beginning of a journey to the heart of unmitigatednothingness, beyond the animationprovided by Pizza Hut, DairyQueen ... Valleycultures were thoughtto be the most resistantto Junkspace: at GVZ you can stillsee a universe of rules, order, hierarchy,neatness, coordination, poised moments before its implosion,but at ZHR huge "timepieces"hover in frontof interiorwaterfalls as an essayin Regionaljunk.Duty-free is Junkspace; Junkspace is duty-freespace. Where culturewas thinnest,will it be the firstto run out? Is emptinesslocal? Do wide open spaces demand wide open Junkspace? Sunbelt: huge populations where there was nothing; PHX: warpaint on every terminal,dead Indian outlines on everysurface-carpet, wallpaper,napkins-like frogsflattened by car tires.Public Artdistributed across LAX: the fishthat have disappeared fromour riversreturn as public art in the concourse; onlywhat is dead can be resurrected.Memory itself may have turned into Junkspace; only those murdered will be remembered... Deprivation can be caused by overdose or shortage; both conditions happen in Junkspace (often at the same time). Minimumis the ultimateornament, a self- righteouscrime, the contemporaryBaroque. It does not signifybeauty, but guilt. Its demonstrativeearnestness drives whole civilizationsinto the welcomingarms of camp and kitsch.Ostensibly a relieffrom constant sensorial onslaught,mini- mum is maximumin drag, a stealthlaundering of luxury:the stricterthe lines, the more irresistiblethe seductions. Its role is not to approximatethe sublime, but to minimizethe shame of consumption,drain embarrassment,to lowerwhat is higher.The minimumnow existsin a state of parasitic codependency withthe overdose: to have and not to have, cravingand owning,finally collapsed in a sin- gle signifier... Museums are sanctimoniousJunkspace; there is no sturdieraura than holiness.To accommodate the convertsthey have attractedby default,muse- ums massivelyturn "bad" space into "good" space; the more untreatedthe oak, the largerthe profitcenter. Monasteries inflated to the scale of departmentstores: expansion is the Third Millennium'sentropy, dilute or die. Dedicated to mostly respectingthe dead, no cemeterywould dare to reshufflecorpses as casuallyin the name of currentexpediency; curators plot hangingsand unexpected encoun- ters in a donor-platelabyrinth with the finesseof the retailer:lingerie becomes "Nude, Action, Body,"cosmetics "History,Memory, Society." All paintingsbased on black grids are herded togetherin a single whiteroom. Large spiders in the humongousconversion offer delirium for the masses ... Narrativereflexes that have enabled us fromthe beginningof time to connect dots, fillin blanks,are now turnedagainst us: we cannotstop noticing-no sequence is too absurd,trivial, meaningless,insulting... Through our ancient evolutionaryequipment, our irre- pressible attention span, we helplessly register, provide insight, squeeze meaning, read intention; we cannot stop makingsense out of the utterlysense- less... On its triumphalmarch as contentprovider, art extends far beyond the museum's ever-increasingboundaries. Outside, in the real world, the "art plan- ner" spreads Junkspace's fundamental incoherence by assigning defunct

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mythologiesto residualsurfaces and plottingthree-dimensional works in leftover emptiness.Scouting forauthenticity, his or her touchseals the fateof what was real, taps it forincorporation in Junkspace.Art galleries move en masse to "edgy"loca- tions,then convertraw space into whitecubes ... The onlylegitimate discourse is loss; art replenishesJunkspace in directproportion to its own morbidity.We used to renewwhat was depleted; now we tryto resurrectwhat is gone ... Outside, the architect'sfootbridge is rocked to the breakingpoint by a stampede of enthusias- tic pedestrians; the designer's initial audacity now awaits the engineer's application of dampers. Junkspace is a look-no-handsworld ... The constant threatof virtualityin Junkspace is no longer exorcized by petrochemicalprod- ucts, plastic,vinyl or rubber;the syntheticcheapens. Junkspace has to exaggerate its claims to the authentic.Junkspace is like a womb thatorganizes the transition of endless quantities of the Real-stone, trees,goods, daylight,people-into the unreal. Entire mountains are dismembered to provide ever-greaterquantities of authenticity,suspended on precariousbrackets, polished to a blindingstate of flashthat renders the intended earnestnessinstantly elusive. Stone onlycomes in light yellow,flesh, a violent beige, a soaplike green, the colors of Communist plasticsin the 1950s. Forestsare felled,their wood all pale: maybe the originsof Junkspace go back to the kindergarten ... ("Origins" is a mint shampoo that stings the anal region.) Color in the real worldlooks increasinglyunreal, drained. Color in virtualspace is luminous,therefore irresistible. A surfeitof reality-TVhas made us into amateur guards monitoringa Junkuniverse... From the livelybreasts of the classicalviolinist to the designerstubble of the Big Brotheroutcast, the con- textualpedophilia of the formerrevolutionary, the routineaddictions of the stars, the runnymakeup of the evangelist,the robotic body language of the conduc- tor,the dubious benefitsof the fund-raisingmarathon, the futileexplanations of the politician: the swooping movement of the TV camera suspended fromits boom-an eagle withoutbeak or claws,just an optical stomach-swallows images and confessionsindiscriminately, like a trashbag, to propel themas cyber-vomitin space. TV-studiosets-garishly monumental-are both the culminationand the end of perspectivalspace as we've knownit: angular geometricremnants invading starryinfinities; real space edited forsmooth transmissionin virtualspace, crucial hinge in an infernalfeedback loop ... the vastnessof Junkspace extended to the edges of the Big Bang. Because we spend our lifeindoors-like animalsin a zoo- we are obsessed with the weather: 40 percent of all TV consistsof presentersof lesser attractiveness gesturing helplessly in front of windswept formations, through which you recognize, sometimes,your own destination/currentposi- tion. Conceptually,each monitor,each TV screen is a substitutefor a window;real life is inside, while cyberspace has become the great outdoors . . . Mankind is alwaysgoing on about architecture.What ifspace startedlooking at mankind?Will Junkspaceinvade the body?Through the vibes of the cell phone? Has it already? Through Botox injections? Collagen? Silicone implants? Liposuction? Penis enlargements?Does gene therapyannounce a total reengineeringaccording to

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Junkspace?Is each of us a mini-constructionsite? Is mankindthe sum of three to fivebillion individualupgrades? Is it a repertoireof reconfigurationthat facilitates the intromissionof a new species into its self-madeJunksphere? The cosmetic is the new cosmic ...

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