Feedback Loops: Or, Past Futures Haunt Architecture's Present

• Published in: Architectural design Vol. 89; no. 4; pp. 46 - 53
• Main Author: Zeiger, Mimi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.07.2019; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: A Guide to the Dirty South – Atlanta; Adolf Loos; Architecture; Avant-garde; Barbara Kasten; Beistegui Apartment; Bureau Spectacular's Another Raumplan; Cedric Price; Chicago Architecture Biennial; Cities of Days shop; Claire Bishop; David Bowie's ‘Space Oddity’; DFS; Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Dorothea von Hantelmann; Ed Ruscha; Elon Musk's SpaceX; Falcon Heavy rocket; FAT; Feedback loops; Filippo Tommaso Marinetti; Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice; Fondazione Prada; Four Experimental Mascots for Los Angeles; Four Seasons restaurant; Fun Palace; Fundamental Acts (Life, Education, Ceremony, Love and Death); Goodie Mob; Haus Gables; Hong Kong; House is a House is a House is a House is a House; I See Paris, I See France; Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT); Jacques Derrida; Jennifer Bonner; Jet Age; Joan Littlewood; John Portman; Johnston Marklee; Josef Paul Kleihues; Laurel Broughton; Le Corbusier; Life on the Fantasy Substrate of Los Angeles; MALL; Mark Fisher; Mark Lee; Mars; Mies van der Rohe; Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA); Mussolini; Napoleon; New York; New York City's High Line; OMA; Outkast; Philip Johnson; Prague; Quaderna; Rem Koolhaas; Restaurant Torre; Reyner Banham; Rockwell Group; Sharon Johnston; Spectres of Marx; Starman; Tesla Roadster; The Shed; UrbanLab's Re‐ Encampment; Venturi, Scott Brown; Villa Müller; WELCOMEPROJECTS; What Is the New Ritual Space for the 21st Century?; Zanotta
• ISSN: 0003-8504; 1554-2769
• DOI: 10.1002/ad.2456

Is architectural discourse haunted by an avantgarde future that never materialised? Los Angeles‐based critic, curator and editor Mimi Zeiger describes how these tropes, many of which relate to the preoccupations of the 1960s and 1970s, are recycled and repurposed by contemporary practitioners. She cautions that such feedback loops, orbits or revolutions strip meanings, narratives and politics from original source materials, which not only leaves a vacuum of nostalgia at the centre of the discourse, but also limits the discipline's ability to speculate on the pressures of our present moment.