Untitled Document

Commission

The UN Security Council – sometime centre of the global security discourse – shifted to the periphery of global politics because of its obsolete structures and mechanisms. The security vacuum that the UN never could – or didn’t want to – fill explains the emergence of the CTW. An edifice had to be created that could turn the pathological collective phenomena triggered by 9/11 into a productive force – in the sense of an organization of existing, but also completely new, economies. The route was defined, the destination unknown. Mourning, fear, rage, but also the fascin- ation exercised by the event – all this offered the range of motivesneeded to give American society an institution that could create identity, allotting resource status to the posttraumatic assimilation process. CTW scientists and economists devised algorithm-based simula-tion programmes that made it possible to anticipate future developments. Science responded to the inefficiency of apolitical discourse based on major-ity “opinion-” and ideol-ogy-driven decisions with countermodels that were effective because they were pragmatic.

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THEME PARK AND MEMORIAL

Contradicting the conspiratorial character of the Pentagon and outdoing the White House’s museum quality, the CTW programme responds to the necessity of politainment by integrating two largely indistinguishable typologies: the theme park and the memorial. These penetrate the politoscientifically conceived institution and ensure consensus production that will legitimize democracy.

(.....)

THE CRYPT

The crypt, self-sinking through the dead weight of 180,000 tons of reinforced concrete, is an allegory of a long-drawn-out assimilation process scheduled to end in the year 4000. If architecture means containment, i.e. the act of organizing holding conditions, this makes the inherent connection of architecture and sacrifice the outlawed element that cannot be contained. This complicity produced the wasteful architects of the pyramids, which cost countless human lives. The archaic element of sacrifice served to master a fate now known as contingency management. The CTW as a virtuous building is both sacrifice and sacrificial altar; as a technical response to the challenge of the Islamic culture of martyrdom it rescues its visitors at the price of its own annihilation. What remains is a ruin made up of evacuation spaces and escape routes:

exit architecture …















			Commission The UN Security Council – sometime centre of the global security discourse – shifted to the periphery of global politics because of its obsolete structures and mechanisms. The security vacuum that the UN never could – or didn’t want to – fill explains the emergence of the CTW. An edifice had to be created that could turn the pathological collective phenomena triggered by 9/11 into a productive force – in the sense of an organization of existing, but also completely new, economies. The route was defined, the destination unknown. Mourning, fear, rage, but also the fascin- ation exercised by the event – all this offered the range of motivesneeded to give American society an institution that could create identity, allotting resource status to the posttraumatic assimilation process. CTW scientists and economists devised algorithm-based simula-tion programmes that made it possible to anticipate future developments. Science responded to the inefficiency of apolitical discourse based on major-ity “opinion-” and ideol-ogy-driven decisions with countermodels that were effective because they were pragmatic. (.....) THEME PARK AND MEMORIAL Contradicting the conspiratorial character of the Pentagon and outdoing the White House’s museum quality, the CTW programme responds to the necessity of politainment by integrating two largely indistinguishable typologies: the theme park and the memorial. These penetrate the politoscientifically conceived institution and ensure consensus production that will legitimize democracy. (.....) THE CRYPT The crypt, self-sinking through the dead weight of 180,000 tons of reinforced concrete, is an allegory of a long-drawn-out assimilation process scheduled to end in the year 4000. If architecture means containment, i.e. the act of organizing holding conditions, this makes the inherent connection of architecture and sacrifice the outlawed element that cannot be contained. This complicity produced the wasteful architects of the pyramids, which cost countless human lives. The archaic element of sacrifice served to master a fate now known as contingency management. The CTW as a virtuous building is both sacrifice and sacrificial altar; as a technical response to the challenge of the Islamic culture of martyrdom it rescues its visitors at the price of its own annihilation. What remains is a ruin made up of evacuation spaces and escape routes: exit architecture …