Junkspace

Author(s): Rem Koolhaas

Source: October, Vol. 100, Obsolescence (Spring, 2002), pp. 175-190
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/779098
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 Junkspace

REM KOOLHAAS

Logan Airport: A World-Class Upgrade for the Twenty-first C

-Late-Twentieth Century Billboard

Rabbit is the new beef... Because we abhor the utilitarian, we have con-
demned ourselves to a lifelong immersion in the arbitrary... LAX: welcoming-
possibly flesh-eating-orchids at the check-in counter... "Identity" is the newjunk
food for the dispossessed, globalization's fodder for the disenfranchised ... If
space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, Junk-Space is the residue
mankind leaves on the planet. The built (more about that later) product of
modernization is not modern architecture but Junkspace. Junkspace is what
remains after modernization has run its course, or, more precisely, what coagulates
while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational
program: to share the blessings of science, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis,
or meltdown ... Although its individual parts are the outcome of brilliant inven-
tions, lucidly planned by human intelligence, boosted by infinite computation,
their sum spells the end of Enlightenment, its resurrection as farce, a low-grade
purgatory ...Junkspace is the sum total of our current achievement; we have built
more than did all previous generations put together, but somehow we do not reg-
ister on the same scales. We do not leave pyramids. According to a new gospel of
ugliness, there is already more Junkspace under construction in the twenty-first
century than has survived from the twentieth ... It was a mistake to invent modern
architecture for the twentieth century. Architecture disappeared in the twentieth
century; we have been reading a footnote under a microscope hoping it would
turn into a novel; our concern for the masses has blinded us to People's
Architecture. Junkspace seems an aberration, but it is the essence, the main thing...
the product of an encounter between escalator and air-conditioning, conceived in
an incubator of Sheetrock (all three missing from the history books). Continuity is
the essence ofJunkspace; it exploits any invention that enables expansion, deploys
the infrastructure of seamlessness: escalator, air-conditioning, sprinkler, fire shutter,
hot-air curtain ...It is always interior, so extensive that you rarely perceive limits; it
promotes disorientation by any means (mirror, polish, echo) . . . Junkspace is

OCTOBER 100, Spring 2002, pp. 175-190. ? 2002 Rem Koolhaas.

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176 OCTOBER

sealed, held to
remained cons
air-conditioni
architecture.
separates buil
mutant regim
single shoppin
men, and fixe
(All architects
but with hidd
money, is no
sooner or late
space, we have
for the produ
site: substanc
space; Junksp
space then. Th
renovations. T
cover casinos
space, a territ
Junkspace is
distinctions, u
hierarchy wit
more. Junksp
security blank
is like being c
A fuzzy empire
bloated and st
Seemingly an
hollowness, a
of building, p
ter, cemente
lightweight, n
carcass is torn
are no walls, o
or gold. Struc
ornamental; s
deliver cyclo
workhorse of
coming an inf
it is simply ap
erected super
Bauhaus and 7

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 Junkspace 177

closely by Mayan ..
form, Junkspace is
ing. Its specific conf
Patterns imply repe
measure, beyond c
remembered. It is fl
freeze ensures insta
only interest. Its ge
nonarchitectural, it tends to the vaulted, to the Dome. Some sections seem to be
devoted to utter inertness, others in perpetual rhetorical turmoil: the deadest
resides next to the most hysterical. Themes cast a pall of arrested development
over interiors as big as the Pantheon, spawning stillbirths in every corner. The
aesthetic is Byzantine, gorgeous, and dark, splintered into thousands of shards,
all visible at the same time: a quasi-panoptical universe in which all contents
rearrange themselves in split seconds around the dizzy eye of the beholder. Murals
used to show idols; Junkspace's modules are dimensioned to carry brands; myths
can be shared, brands husband aura at the mercy of focus groups. Brands in
Junkspace perform the same role as black holes in the universe: they are essences
through which meaning disappears . . . The shiniest surfaces in the history of
mankind reflect humanity at its most casual. The more we inhabit the palatial, the
more we seem to dress down. A stringent dress code-last spasm of etiquette?-
governs access to Junkspace: shorts, sneakers, sandals, shell suit, fleece, jeans,
parka, backpack. As if the People suddenly accessed the private quarters of a
dictator, Junkspace is best enjoyed in a state of postrevolutionary gawking.
Polarities have merged-there is nothing left between desolation and frenzy.
Neon signifies both the old and the new; interiors refer to the Stone and Space
Age at the same time. Like the deactivated virus in an inoculation, Modern archi-
tecture remains essential, but only in its most sterile manifestation, High Tech (it
seemed so dead only a decade ago!). It exposes what previous generations kept
under wraps: structures emerge like springs from a mattress; exit stairs dangle in
a didactic trapeze; probes thrust into space to deliver laboriously what is in fact
omnipresent, free air; acres of glass hang from spidery cables, tautly stretched
skins enclose flaccid nonevents. Transparency only reveals everything in which you
cannot partake. At the stroke of midnight it all may revert to Taiwanese Gothic; in
three years it may segue into Nigerian Sixties, Norwegian Chalet, or default
Christian. Earthlings now live in a kindergarten grotesque.. .Junkspace thrives on
design, but design dies in Junkspace. There is no form, only proliferation ...
Regurgitation is the new creativity; instead of creation, we honor, cherish, and
embrace manipulation . . . Superstrings of graphics, transplanted emblems of
franchise and sparkling infrastructures of light, LEDs, and video describe an
authorless world beyond anyone's claim, always unique, utterly unpredictable, yet
intensely familiar. Junkspace is hot (or suddenly arctic); fluorescent walls, folded
like melting stained glass, generate additional heat to raise the temperature of

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178 OCTOBER

Junkspace to l
and right, its
cloning: forms
Junkspace she
morning. In p
only be modif
our culture has
have become m
comes predigi
become that o
negotiation, d
identical eleme
now wrested fr
Architects tho
tion to transc
would last thr
mutate over ti
subsystem onl
work or patte
coating: constr
longer a prob
stapling and t
unbroken sur
clamp, stick, f
Each element
suggested the
transient coup
high probabilit
but the abrupt
with their fin
millennia work
the program o
Because it is en
monumental a
stop moving fo
control? Since
the idea of im
staggers endle
cosm ofJunks
thick layers
Junkspace is d
seating arrange
Junkspace offe

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 Junkspace 179

spatial sensation; in
tables draped in w
calories-cottage c
plenty, without ho
later, to bodily fu
groaning Romans,
is so intensely con
undoing the dama
recover from Junk
another population
hovering, sweeping
its cleaners ...Dedic
of future perfectio
euphoria; "pardon
mark ongoing patc
imminent shine, t
knees to repair fade
negotiate elusive m
superpositions of d
type of wall-to-w
Traditionally, typo
that excludes othe
cumulative, approx
lessness is still for
successive trucks
randomness of its c
envelope that assum
Or the vague crotc
chaotic or frighteningly aseptic-like a best-seller-overdetermined and
indeterminate at the same time. There is something strange about ballrooms, for
instance: huge wastelands kept column-free for ultimate flexibility. Because you've
never been invited to that kind of event, you have never seen them in use; you've
only seen them being prepared with chilling precision: a relentless grid of circular
tables, extending toward a distant horizon, their diameters preempting
communication; a dais big enough for the politburo of a totalitarian state, wings
announcing as yet unimagined surprises-acres of organization to support future
drunkenness, disarray, and disorder. Or car shows .. .Junkspace is often described
as a space of flows, but that is a misnomer; flows depend on disciplined movement,
bodies that cohere. Junkspace is a web without a spider; although it is an
architecture of the masses, each trajectory is strictly unique. Its anarchy is one of
the last tangible ways in which we experience freedom. It is a space of collision, a
container of atoms, busy, not dense . . . There is a special way of moving in
Junkspace, at the same time aimless and purposeful. It is an acquired culture.

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180 OCTOBER

Junkspace fe
comes unstuck
of an another
hold it to a r
wake, a dereg
movement be
machines, aut
in a flow, pu
two temporar
manifest ill w
Junkspace le
stampedes tri
up in front o
between the p
The young in
Junkspace has
ofJunkspace e
desirable squa
staircases, al
structures-s
turned into a
hiccup of hum
entire highwa
you notice wh
Junkspace ha
strophic; som
bachelor pad-
imperceptibly
cracks appear
longer viable,
passages. Jud
embodies oppo
rary, flouri
deterioration
closed . . Ren
absence; now
conversion is
more space. In
of its own ag
Since passeng
idea of rebuil
reverse, signs
Screens of ta

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 Junkspace 181

hard, one flabby,

space; the more a
world of manual l
locker rooms, cof
crumpled plate like
sheets of black pla
Metal ducts are rep
voids (former cany
proofing, string; t
tortured, and com
plotted. The floor i
plastic, metallic, m
The ground is no m
plane. The absolute
to be replaced by a
palms, fountains, b
but have become "destinations." Their tenant life tends to be short: the most

stagnant windows, the most perfunctory dresses, the most implausible flo
perspective is gone, as in a rainforest (itself disappearing, they keep sayin
formerly straight is coiled into evermore complex configurations. Only a
modernist choreography can explain the twists and turns, the asce
descents, the sudden reversals that comprise the typical path from c
(misleading name) to the apron of the average contemporary airport. Be
never reconstruct or question the absurdity of these enforced ddrives, we
submit to grotesque journeys past perfume, asylum-seekers, buildi
underwear, oysters, pornography, cell phone-incredible adventures
brain, the eye, the nose, the tongue, the womb, the testicles... There wa
polemic about the right angle and the straight line; now the ninetieth deg
become one among many. In fact, remnants of former geometries create
havoc, offering forlorn nodes of resistance that create unstable eddies i
opportunistic flows... Who would dare claim responsibility for this sequen
idea that a profession once dictated, or at least presumed to predict,
movements now seems laughable, or worse: unthinkable. Instead of desig
is calculation: the more erratic the path, eccentric the loops, hidden the bl
efficient the exposure, the more inevitable the transaction. In this war,
designers are the great turncoats: Where once signage promised to deliver
where you wanted to be, it now obfuscates and entangles you in a th
cuteness that forces you past unwanted detours, turns you back when you
Postmodernism adds a crumple-zone of viral poche that fractures and m
the endless frontline of display, a peristaltic shrink-wrap crucial to all com
exchange. Trajectories are launched as ramp, turn horizontal witho
warning, intersect, fold down, suddenly emerge on a vertiginous balcony
large void. Fascism minus dictator. From the sudden dead end where you

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 182 OCTOBER

dropped by a
destination, f
sources. (The
scooped out of
long in the fr
Toilet groups
centers: Succ
screen where
Bacchanalian free-for-all ... In this standoff between the redundant and the
inevitable, a plan would actually make matters worse, would drive you to
despair. Only the diagram gives a bearable version. There is zero loyalty-and
tolerance-toward configuration, no "original" condition; architecture has t
into a time-lapse sequence to reveal a "permanent evolution." ... The only ce
is conversion-continuous-followed, in rare cases, by "restoration," the pro
that claims ever new sections of history as extensions ofJunkspace. History corr
absolute history corrupts absolutely. Color and matter are eliminated from
bloodless grafts: the bland has become the only meeting ground for the o
the new... Can the bland be amplified? The featureless be exaggerated? Thr
height? Depth? Length? Variation? Repetition? Sometimes not overload bu
opposite, an absolute absence of detail, generates Junkspace. A voided cond
of frightening sparseness, shocking proof that so much can be organized
little. Laughable emptiness infuses the respectful distance or tentative em
that starchitects maintain in the presence of the past, authentic or not. Inva
the primordial decision is to leave the original intact; the formerly residu
declared the new essence, the focus of the intervention. As a first step, the subs
to be preserved is wrapped in a thick pack of commerce and catering
reluctant skier pushed downhill by responsible minders. To show respect, symme
are maintained and helplessly exaggerated; ancient building techniqu
resurrected and honed to irrelevant shine, quarries reopened to excava
"same" stone, indiscreet donor names chiseled prominently in the mee
typefaces; the courtyard covered by a masterful, structural "filigree"-emph
uncompetitive-so that continuity may be established with the "rest" ofJun
(abandoned galleries, display slums, Jurassic concepts... ). Conditioni
applied; filtered daylight reveals vast, antiseptic expanses of monumental ret
and makes them come alive, vibrant as a computer rendering... The cu
public space: latent fascism safely smothered in signage, stools, symp
Junkspace is postexistential; it makes you uncertain where you are, obscures
you go, undoes where you were. Who do you think you are? Who do you wa
be? (Note to architects: You thought that you could ignore Junkspace, visi
surreptitiously, treat it with condescending contempt or enjoy it vicariou
because you could not understand it, you've thrown away the keys... Bu
your own architecture is infected, has become equally smooth, all-inc
continuous, warped, busy, atrium-ridden ...) JunkSignatureTM is the new ar

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 Junkspace 183

ture: the former

Junkspace minus it
planes-turns into
reassemble, revam
marbles-redo, res
Junkspace will be
pollutes to consum
trucks, buses, swea
byJunkspace. Junk
ical faculty in the
Photoshop, seamles
NGOs. Comfort is
political program
politics of systema
Junkspace is that it
the formal wither
misunderstood. Lan
Mankind, torn by
launched a new la
designer's footbrid
former incompati
food/court, healt
sonorous amalgama
unusual importatio
they aim to shed m
knows all your emot
preempts people's
blatantly proclaims
"minimal," histor
anticipation of th
Thousand Year Re
stripped of privacy
the tracing of the
thing about you, e
formerly impervio
pay-TV offering c
seats, courtesy cond
Junkspace pretend
out of shared interest or free association, but out of identical statistics and
unavoidable demographics, an opportunistic weave of vested interests. Each man,
woman, and child is individually targeted, tracked, split off from the rest...
Fragments come together at "security" only, where a grid of video screens
disappointingly reassembles individual frames into a banalized, utilitarian cubism

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 184 OCTOBER

that reveals
trained guard
its actual ow
happens spo
play of the m
"czars" with
former lefti
hippodromes
moguls who
Default Pres
wants but th
rivals and even exceeds that of the Public-its economy becomes more
inscrutable. Its financing is a deliberate haze, clouding opaque deals, dubious tax
breaks, unusual incentives, exemptions, tenuous legalities, transferred air rights,
joined properties, special zoning districts, public-private complicities. Funded by
bonds, lottery, subsidy, charity, grant: An erratic flow of yen, Euros, and dollars
creates financial envelopes that are as fragile as their contents. Because of a struc-
tural shortfall, a fundamental deficit, a contingent bankruptcy, each square inch
becomes a grasping, needy surface dependent on covert or overt support, dis-
count, compensation and fund-raising. For culture, "engraved donor bricks"; for
everything else: cash, rentals, leases, franchises, the underpinning of brands.
Junkspace expands with the economy but its footprint cannot contract-when it is
no longer needed, it thins. Because of its tenuous viability, Junkspace has to
swallow more and more program to survive; soon, we will be able to do anything
anywhere. We will have conquered place. At the end ofJunkspace, the Universal?
Through Junkspace, old aura is transfused with new luster to spawn sudden
commercial viability: Barcelona amalgamated with the Olympics, Bilbao with the
Guggenheim, Forty-second Street with Disney. God is dead, the author is dead,
history is dead, only the architect is left standing.., .an insulting evolutionary
joke ... A shortage of masters has not stopped a proliferation of masterpieces.
"Masterpiece" has become a definitive sanction, a semantic space that saves the
object from criticism, leaves its qualities unproven, its performance untested, its
motives unquestioned. Masterpiece is no longer an inexplicable fluke, a roll of the
dice, but a consistent typology: its mission to intimidate, most of its exterior
surfaces bent, huge percentages of its square footage dysfunctional, its centrifugal
components barely held together by the pull of the atrium, dreading the
imminent arrival of forensic accounting... The more indeterminate the city, the
more specific its Junkspace; all ofJunkspace's prototypes are urban-the Roman
Forum, the Metropolis; it is only their reverse synergy that makes them suburban,
simultaneously swollen and shrunk. Junkspace reduces what is urban to urbanity...
Instead of public life, Public SpaceTM: what remains of the city once the unpre-
dictable has been removed . . . Space for "honoring," "sharing," "caring,"
"grieving," and "healing" ... civility imposed by an overdose of serif... In the third

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 Junkspace 185

Millennium, Junk
exposure and intima
the author) has spaw
authoritarian ... At
jected to the most d
answering gulags on
airplane, more and m
ing to the most h
megalomania-the di
Junkspace, entertai
concentration: con
convention, concent
Entertainment is lik
ancient: the moving
dinosaurs, news, w
shortage-we have ad
in contraction, forc
The secret of corpor
the efficient, the er
Corporate Sublime
humanist, inclusivi
through very small
into grotesque pos
malleable substances into the most drastic contortions maintains control, satisfies
the drive to get rid of surprise. Not canned laughter, but canned euphoria...
Color has disappeared to dampen the resulting cacophony, and is used only as
cue: relax, enjoy, be well, we're united in sedation . . . Why can't we tolerate
stronger sensations? Dissonance? Awkwardness? Genius? Anarchy? ... Junkspace
heals, or at least that is the assumption of many hospitals. We thought the hospital
was unique-a universe that identified by its smell-but now that we are used to
universal conditioning we recognize it was merely a prototype; all Junkspace is
defined by its smell. Often heroic in size, planned with the last adrenaline of
modernism's grand inspiration, we have made them (too) human; life or death
decisions are taken in spaces that are relentlessly friendly, littered with fading
bouquets, empty coffee cups, and yesterday's papers. You used to face death in
appropriate cells; now your nearest are huddled together in atriums. A bold
datum line is established on every vertical surface, dividing the infirmary in two:
above an endless humanist scroll of "color," loved ones, children's sunsets, signage,
and art.., .below a utilitarian zone for defacement and disinfectant, anticipated
collision, scratch, spill, and smudge ...Junkspace is space as vacation; there once
was a relationship between leisure and work, a biblical dictate that divided our
weeks, organized public life. Now we work harder, marooned in a never-ending
casual Friday... The office is the next frontier ofJunkspace. Since you can work at

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186 OCTOBER

home, the off

the city. Jun
desks become
partitions, ki
memory," "in
of the unmem
prop: the CEO
other Junksp
century will b
CNNNYSENAS
presented in
driving lesson
speech-doldru
nobody remem
impressive ach
jargon, tourism
want, like a sp
few plausible
discoveries w
nuances misca
nologies. Aber
legitimacy, he
express, or to
it stakes claim
sus. Entire or
equivalent of
ever-descend
orchestration
easily engulf
that needed h
outdoors itself
carrying incr
Then Junksp
Junkspace rep
the resurrect
pastures. A ne
Junkspace ha
fascism that p
near Armani,
fountains pro
hovering mom
water, wood:
new rainfores

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Junkspace 187

tortured, lawns cov

sprinklers water acc
site end of Junkspa
serene, free of com
achieved by the fur
realization are simila
biojunk; ecology t
Junkspace as ecolo
depends on artific
making to settle, in
between the scrap
obligation to create
of chlorophyll, eco-
rewriting the apoc
complexities of Ju
adjunct infrastructu
routinely displaying
Now, massive injec
domain previously i
of Junkspace, and f
Railway stations un
drops, bridges span
the harp. To each ri
wind, this new gene
maybe a God, and
malaria to Sussex; 3
with ability, theoret
hazard exacerbated
quasi-autonomy, to
journey from the
accommodation for
the imminence of
democratically distr
of admission ... MXP
tion-whatever was
hurriedly bulldozed
a botched sequence o
by the current ruler
regional funds, caus
phones to notice). D
tum, nothing else:
coated in the same
beyond any possibili

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188 OCTOBER

users to enact
ingly harmles
beyond the an
thought to be
of rules, ord
implosion, but
essay in Regio
culture was t
open spaces d
there was no
every surface
Art distribute
as public art i
may have tur
Deprivation c
Junkspace (of
righteous crim
Its demonstra
of camp and k
mum is maxim
the more irre
but to minim
is higher. The
overdose: to h
gle signifier
than holiness.
ums massively
the larger the
expansion is t
respecting th
the name of c
ters in a dono
"Nude, Action
on black grid
humongous co
have enabled
now turned ag
meaningless,
pressible att
meaning, read
less... On its t
museum's eve
ner" spreads

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Junkspace 189

mythologies to res
emptiness. Scouting
taps it for incorpo
tions, then conver
loss; art replenishe
to renew what was
architect's footbri
tic pedestrians; t
application of da
threat of virtualit
ucts, plastic, viny
its claims to the a
of endless quantit
unreal. Entire mo
of authenticity, su
flash that renders
light yellow, flesh
plastics in the 195
Junkspace go back
the anal region.) C
in virtual space is
us into amateur g
the classical violin
textual pedophilia
the runny makeup
tor, the dubious b
the politician: th
boom-an eagle wit
and confessions ind
space. TV-studio
end of perspectiva
starry infinities; r
hinge in an infern
edges of the Big B
we are obsessed w
lesser attractiven
through which yo
tion. Conceptually
life is inside, wh
always going on ab
Junkspace invade
Through Botox i
enlargements? Do

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 190 OCTOBER

Junkspace? Is
five billion in
the intromiss
the new cosmic ...

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