ICONOTECTURE

Iconotecture, like three-card monte, relies on sleight of hand, misdirection, and gullibility. It takes at least three to play the game, the operator, the shill, and the mark. The mark never wins. He looses because he is fooled into believing he is the smartest of the three even though he has never played the game. He assumes there are rules, but there are none.

The situation is reversed in architecture. The mark assumes there are no rules and the iconotects get away with murder. Bombastic extravaganzas and glittering absurdities pass for the genuine article and no one is the wiser. So-called “iconic buildings” and “sculpture for living in” are as counterfeit as the banks that occupy them.

The new CCTV headquarters that burned to the ground leaves one to wonder if it is in someway related to the culture of cupidity that is a pox upon us. The voices that were singing its praises have fallen silent or simply switched choirs. Follow-fashion that they are, they ingratiate themselves to the makers of razzle-dazzle theatrics because they would not know architecture if it fell on them.

They rave about the Persian Gulf phenomena where the rich are tripping over each other to live on man-made islands in the middle of nowhere. Don’t they know that the enclosed paradisiacal garden is a virginal metaphor? Critical thinking and philosophy cannot take root in confinement. Furthermore, gated communities are magnets for wheelers, dealers, and Ponzi schemers looking for easy marks and foolish virgins.

As an architect that plays by the rules and is committed to truth and beauty I am repulsed by these absolute monarchies that treat women as chattel and workers like beasts of burden. One can only hope that the shape of the flattened palm is a portent of things to come. Babel was supposed to reach heaven and CCTV was a giant loophole but offered no escape to those caught in its inferno. The iconoclasts are looking better every day.