THE THEATRE OF METROPOLITAN LIFE
“THE DEEPEST PROBLEMS OF MODERN LIFE DERIVE FROM
THE CLAIM OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO PRESERVE THE AUTONOMY
AND INDIVIDUALITY OF HIS EXISTENCE IN THE FACE OF
OVERWHELMING SOCIAL FORCES, HISTORICAL HERITAGE,
EXTERNAL CULTURE, AND THE TECHNIQUES OF LIFE.”
London is a city with the size, population and capital of a nation. In this city the metropolitan condition dictates a certain temporality, where even in the minutes travelling between one location to the other one is bombarded with information. This scheme exaggerates everything the metropolitan condition requires, exaggerating it in a way that directs capital away from ‘piecemeal development’ and toward a single entity. Where space is conceived as a totality. If space is socially produced then it’s conceived as a universal thing, because capital is universal. Instead of packaging this capital in individual plots and selling it off one by one in a fragmented way, we simply represent this capital as the totality it is. The city doesn’t work in a fragmented, autonomous way, it only works together. The scheme only gives a platform to the city, to prove that it is more than just the sum of its parts, highlighting the wonder, theatrics and spectacle of everyday life in London.
The totality will be made up of private capital, this relies on private capital buying into this idea therefore the totality must fund itself after construction.