think we can trace the origins of this sort of approach back in the 1970s with the massive with- draw of architects from political concerns and their retreat to formal abstraction and architecture -as-representation. The bankrupt-cy of modemism meant at least a double response in this regard, one towards “academicist” formal abstraction (Eisenman, Tschumi, Libeskind), and another trend towards populism and the uncritical “celebration of complexi-ty” (Venturi, Graves, Moore). May- be a third trend could be that of the heritage of techno-utopian architects (Friedman, Price). I think what you have with Koolhaas is a sort of synthesis of all of these, and these new “young” ar- chitects are that “on (postmodem) steroids”. It is not too hard to see how these approaches “mirror” our current ideological conditions, but it seems to me they are a bit out-of-date, especial ly when you have in mind the current economic crisis-we could say they fit perfectly the 1990s, They seem a bit of a joke, but we might rightly add a “killing joke”. I think you hit the point with this: “What happens at the human scale is post-rationalized and, of course, no vision of local culture, society or politics are being expressed in this process, which makes it perfectly appropriate for any given established system of production of value to swallow it.

” Which per-fectly fits Lefebvre’s defi- nition of ABSTRACT SPACE-the strategic space developed by the bourgeoisie, the space of capi- talism, a weapon which operates through the reality of abstractions. I think this could be seen as the ulti-mate commodification of architecture, and as such, it goes way beyond an ideological issue, it has its base in a fetishized social practice which engenders a fetishized built environment. Merely simplification for the simplified man (public). To most, architecture is an abstraction and these methods aim to bridge the gap. The question remains whether or not the architect is willing reveal the depth past the dia-gram. I see many architects falling into this trap of over simplifica- tion, not fully understanding the complexities beyond. BIG, JDS and REX understand and take on this complexity yet choose to veil it. This method must be tak-en with a grain of salt, or at least some perspective on the reality of processes. Perhaps this design approach has its origins in the past, as Patricio suggests, but the diagrams through which it communicates feel contemporary. They seem out of a children’s book or a cartoon strip, an ‘Architecture for Dummies’ self-help book or DIY guide to design: lots of small arrows, emoticons of faces both happy and sad, cute little suns casting joyful rays onto the city below. The building depicted as a small model, held gin- gerly in hand, conveys the architect as an innocent child at play, and invites the viewer to share in this experience. The architecture is typically represented in axonometric, a projection that sug- gests the control screen of construction simulation video games like SimCity. The axon narrates a fiction of ‘omniscience to the layman viewer (with total comprehension comes control…with control, the erasure of fear… lacking fear, happiness) while, conveniently, conveying an air of crit- icality and disciplinary legitimacy.

 Despite their playfulness (or childishness), I imagine these dia- grams are intentional and self-conscious. They act as ‘spoonfuls of sugar’ to make our effective lack of control over such buildings and the forces that shape them go down smoothly. Perhaps we should read these representations as early symptoms of ‘Kawaii,’ the aesthetic culture of cute- ness from Japan that has assimilated nearly everything there, turning even power into something cuddly (see ‘Pipo-Kun,’ the cheerful bear-like mascot of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police) Critique of a new “post-ideological” Architectural Paradigm A part of the most influential and popular archi- tects of this decade constitutes the second generation of “disciples” of the “Koolhaasian” school among which we can find people like Bjarke Ingels The critique I would like to propose here does not want to focus on their design methods in the production of any given building – the approach in the conception phase is after all very personal-but rather I will attempt to interrogate these same methods for the way they consider architecture, and therefore communicate and inspire other people in their own approach to this discipline