ARGUMENT/FRAMEWORK

Texaco Road Map (found object)

The issue of corporations and the importance of capital in the American context is a story that is as long as the very existence of the nation. After all, economic reasons drove the expeditions from Europe, and resulted in the subsequent settlement and founding of the colonies. Yes, the American story is one complex and varied, but nevertheless deducible to the common themes of money, land, and power. American architecture as of recently also follows these three themes, with some overlap, but rarely embodying all three.

There is an architecture of money—think of New York City’s “Billionaire’s Row”, a district of supertall skyscrapers containing homes of obscene cost that are rarely lived in, acting only as investments for mostly offshore buyers. There is also the architecture of a lack thereof, as seen with practices in “value engineering”. Money and architecture are so closely tied together in the American context it is hard to conceptualize an American architecture without the financial consideration.

Billionaire’s Row in NYC (NY.Curbed.com)

There is an architecture of land— examples of which include the many square miles of resource extraction, data, and transit infrastructure. So much of American symbolism and ideology is inextricably linked to the land, with infamous examples being “Manifest Destiny”, “Eminent Domain”, and perhaps most controversially ideas of population displacement and more recently ideas of urban renewal. There is the American fascination of owning land, of a single family home with a white picket fence, of the Jeffersonian grid. The land is seen in a simultaneously symbolic and utilitarian sensibility.

ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge chemical plant (BusinessReport.com)

There is an architecture of power—this is made perhaps most apparent in places with ties to governance or the machinations of our daily lives. There is a distinct atmosphere of power in, say, Washington D.C. or Wall Street, that is simply not present in another location of similar conditions. These spaces are built for those who run the nation, as it is, and often by intention the architecture reflects this notion.

United States House of Representatives (NSSGA.org)

What architecture occurs at the intersection of all three of these themes? Though there are almost certainly others, a definitive answer for an architecture of money, land, and power is a “megaproject”. Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff, authors of Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment define a megaproject as: -Projects that cost more than US$1 billion and attract a large amount of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets. -Projects can also be “initiatives that are physical, very expensive, and public”. One important thing to note considering megaprojects is that there is no requirement for a megaproject to be a “built” space; a timely example of a non-built megaproject is the ongoing research and eventual manufacture of a COVID-19 vaccine. In light of this, the megaprojects proposed by each corporation will be just as varied, with bias toward the architectural. Why the use of megaregions as sites? In a simple sense, megaregions are a fantastic representation of where American populations currently reside or are moving to in the coming decades. They provide a view of the United States that is separated from the political and historical stories of borders, and instead operate in the realm of people, and more importantly economics. In most cases, the megaregions are largely geographically and biologically diverse from each other. Most importantly, the thesis positions itself in a future scenario; for clarification, the corporations take power in a near-future timeline, while the megaprojects are constructed and operate in a longer timeline. In the near-future, corporations would see the most logical locations to co-opt as those that were already developed heavily enough to support their ambitions. Megaregions are not a strictly American idea, either; though the exact course of events described within this thesis would be viewed through an American lens, it would allow conversation to occur as to what the implications of this thesis could be for international contexts. With this information, what artifacts does this thesis seek to create? Firstly, the full list of ten corporations will be culled down to a more manageable number between one and five. Depending on the number of megaregions/megaprojects

to explore, the artifacts can reach a finer grain of detail, but at a cost of sheer amount of content. From the culled list of corporations, each one will be explored through a series of different representations, each of which is described in finer detail later in this book. The first type of representation is mapping. Considering the ideological emphasis on the “land”, its resources and its alteration, mapping will be a critical point in the process to explicate each corporation’s direct interests and interventions in their respective megaregions. This will be the most objective form of representation seen in this thesis, acting as a balancing point between the other two types. Thus far, ten maps have been created for each corporation’s current and projected interests. These were crucial for laying a groundwork of graphic style. The second type of representation is diagramming. These diagrams are meant to act as the corporate point of view or persona within this world. In the near term, the corporations will create diagrammatic representations of their ambitions with each megaproject, a-la UNStudio or BIG. This is meant to convey the megaproject’s marketability and act as a means of justification for such drastic measures. There can also be diagrams set in the far future period, lauding all the benefits and results of utilizing the megaprojects (read: propaganda). The third type of representation is rendering. These will be used as more humanistic vignettes into the world of these corporate megaprojects; from construction to implementation, it will be crucial to the narrative of this thesis to get a sense of what it is like to “live in the shadow of the beast”. To what extent the world building is carried out will depend on the number of corporations selected for speculation, as well as the exact type of rendering (still image vs animation, photo-realistic vs conceptual, etc). Physical artifacts and methods of representation could also be explored, and would likely use forms of digital fabrication. At this time, various aspects of the thesis are in flux, and as such being proactive yet flexible will be key.