"Dead Space". The expert explains the task behind building skyscrapers

07.10.2020, Moscow.

The skyscraper as a symbol of modern civilization in its ultimate expression is a universal sign of uniting the world under the power of capitalist utilitarianism, the political scientist, deputy director of the Center of historical examination and state forecast under RUDN University Boris Yakemenko wrote on October 7 on his telegram-channel.

According to Yakemenko, a skyscraper, speaking in Richard Sennet’s parlance, is a “dead space”, i.e. a space formed by erasing residential (lived-in, personal) space, which is replaced by a “place of residence”, a territory where people don’t live but work.

“Such a space cannot create a way of life, it is deprived of individuality, features, or rather, they cease to have any meaning other than utilitarian, as the architecture of bus stops, bridges or railway stations, where people wait for transport or move,” the expert wrote.

Yakemenko added that the skyscraper becomes a model of an extremely impersonal, standardized building that can be built everywhere, a bright experience of development, easily reproducible and easily destroyed, devoid of any originality and value, an architectural marker that masteres the spaces captured by modern civilization.

“The main task of this architecture is to give the mass of clerks form, structure and organize it, to maximize the mobilization and business opportunities of the human or even biological mass,” Yakemenko wrote.

In the expert’s opinion, architecture that cannot fix, include a specific image, becomes a template, indiscriminate, it is the architecture of discriminated, desocialized space.

Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency

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