losing game: harnessing failure
By: Easterling, Keller
.
Publisher: London EMAP Publishing Limited 2019Edition: 4 February 2019.Subject(s): ARCHITECTURE GENERAL (AR-GEN)Online resources: Click here
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Architectural reviewSummary: Preceding the financial crisis of 2008, there was ample evidence of increased risk from the approval and repackaging of subprime loans – but the financial incentives to bundle and sell them overwhelmed the certain knowledge of their risk. And while the virtual apparatus that organised these sales was largely invisible, the effects were not virtual, minuscule or hidden. Houses, commercial buildings and neighbourhoods were visibly falling into ruin. Locally, the invisible force field of failure left behind dead malls, empty big-box stores and deserted suburbs. Globally, the buckshot was equally powerful, if harder to trace. The evening news turned the camera on abandoned homes as it reported increased foreclosure rates. But it stared anxiously at the same house while reporting that more of these houses – the customary barometer of economic health and job creation – needed to be built if the economy were to recover. Even as a surplus devalued the house in a market flooded with foreclosure, new housing starts were treated as a sign of economic confidence. At any one moment, economists and financiers regarded the new house as both a positive and negative economic indicator – an object simultaneously exacerbating and relieving the financial crisis. These assessments were regarded not as irrational or addled, but as cast-iron economic ‘science’.
| Item type | Current location | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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Articles Abstract Database
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School of Architecture Archieval Section | Not for loan | 2021-2021509 |
Preceding the financial crisis of 2008, there was ample evidence of increased risk from the approval and repackaging of subprime loans – but the financial incentives to bundle and sell them overwhelmed the certain knowledge of their risk. And while the virtual apparatus that organised these sales was largely invisible, the effects were not virtual, minuscule or hidden. Houses, commercial buildings and neighbourhoods were visibly falling into ruin. Locally, the invisible force field of failure left behind dead malls, empty big-box stores and deserted suburbs. Globally, the buckshot was equally powerful, if harder to trace. The evening news turned the camera on abandoned homes as it reported increased foreclosure rates. But it stared anxiously at the same house while reporting that more of these houses – the customary barometer of economic health and job creation – needed to be built if the economy were to recover. Even as a surplus devalued the house in a market flooded with foreclosure, new housing starts were treated as a sign of economic confidence. At any one moment, economists and financiers regarded the new house as both a positive and negative economic indicator – an object simultaneously exacerbating and relieving the financial crisis. These assessments were regarded not as irrational or addled, but as cast-iron economic ‘science’.
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