Thesis Research Document (Capital Intoxication: Intoxication, Intensities & Trust in Capital)

Capital Intoxication

Intoxication, Intensities & Trust in Capital

Contents

Thesis Research & Design - Architecture of Intensity Design Unit Brief Declaration - “Intoxicated Space”

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Project Introduction - “Capital Intoxication”

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Unpacking Readings & Theories

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Spatializing Theory - London Riots: A Space of Intoxication

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Adrenal Intoxication

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Adrenal Intoxication within Spaces of Capital Studies:

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Development of the Physical Space of Markets Chicago ‘Outcry’ Trading Market - Adrenaline & the Intoxicated Trader The Intoxicated Trading Crowd Comparison

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Unpacking the Wider Context - Acceleration & Uncertainty

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Research Proposition - Capital Intoxication & the Blurring of the Markets

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Situating Project & Unpacking Site

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Site Strategy - Normalization & Embodiment

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Building Strategy & Design Development

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Technical Declaration - Architecture of Trust

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Development of Trust in Capital

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Contemporary Capital – Seamlessness

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Immersion & Inversion – A New Form of Trust in Capital

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Design - Material Inversion Strategy

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Unit Brief - Intoxicated Space ‘… the rapture of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a lethargic element in which all personal experience of the past became immersed. This chasm of oblivion separates the worlds of everyday reality and the Dionysian reality.’

Dionysius takes us to spaces outside our daily lives, breaks the chains of the known world and permits an insight into alternate experiences of being. These spaces are both mental and physical, created by a state of intoxication. This state can itself be induced by many stimuli – the effect of alcohol, drugs, sex, music, dance, art and belief.

These stimuli do not operate on the human in a vacuum. They take place always in, and through, space: the pub, club, bedroom, brothel, stadium, gallery, church.... Ritual, sensory intensities and deprivations are key to their effect – experiences are played out over time, through space, on and with the body.

This studio asks that you immerse yourself in a collection of texts, films and artworks relating to philosophical, spatial and political readings of intoxication, whilst exploring the spatial-experiential conditions of intoxication through installations at primer stage. You will then be asked to situate these readings and experiences within an urban condition, examining the cultural contexts within which intoxication is produced, culminating in immersive environments that are both intoxicating spaces and architectural proposals.

‘In the consciousness of awakening from intoxication he sees everywhere the terrible and absurd in human existence: it nauseates him.’

The Dionysian Worldview, Friedrich Nietzsche

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Intoxication, Intensities & Trust in Capital Adrenal Heightened State My project questions the experience of the addictive and intoxicating heightened state of adrenaline; a peak state of mind where you feel so immersed that you lose self-consciousness and a sense of context, a form of hyper focus, or what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi terms ‘Flow’ or Abraham Maslow might term ‘Peak Experience’ . In addition, my research recognizes the peaks and troughs of adrenal intensity, the build-up towards a peak state and the subsequent stages of decline and release.

Intoxicating Capital To spatialize this reading into this heightened state, I undertook research into the production of adrenaline through the intoxicating activity of capitalism, (exchange, commodity and trading) which resulted in the tracing of the build-up of bodily adrenal intensities through spaces and the activity of capital. This made me analyse the development of markets and spaces of capital; from the formation of marketplace and act of trade, to diversification of markets, ‘outcry’ trading, and towards the accelerated and global worlds of high frequency trading and the contemporary marketplace of shopping. The research I have undertaken has illustrated a growing detachment between people and market intensities. Despite an acceleration of intensities and further potential for adrenal intoxication due to dematerialization and digitalization, our comprehension and experience of capital has become increasingly abstracted.

Criticality This leads me to think critically and analyse how we actually experience this heightened state in the contemporary accelerated market condition, but also whether the acceleration of the adrenal intensities found in spaces and experiences of capital still form a long-standing relationship to ideas and layers of trust in capital as a system. It has lead me to propose a 21st century post-capitalist trading floor, and with that proposition, question its current relationship to us and how we might re-establish its intoxicating intensities into our experience of capital.

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The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud “It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”

“We may insist as often as we like that man’s intellect is powerless in comparison to his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the instinct is a soft one, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds.”

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DOS

IS

MC

DOC

Dev of Self

Ideal Self

Model Citizen

Dev of Citizen

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Civilisation

The ID

Societal and Culturally accepted norms/ behaviours and symbols - civilisation renounces powerful individual pleasures in favour of a redistribution of equal and constant but less intensive pleasures. Denounces one large payment of pleasure for instalment packages creating cultural frustration and discontent with civilisation.

The repository of primitive urges - repressed thoughts & drives - seek immediate gratification rather than long term deferral and ungoverned by social and moral constructs - disregards everything except immediate desires. Seen as fantasy / Irrational thought bound by sexual & destructive desires which are inherently biological human components.

The Super-Ego

The Ego

Punishes through guilt and rewards through pride to assert itself over the sexual/aggressive impulsive ID and guide us towards behavioural/etiquettes deemed by civilisation as socially acceptable. Persuades the EGO to act upon moralistic goals rather than realistic ones. Developed through family relations within societal framework.

Holds the ID impulse in check and favours rational over emotional thought.

Acts as a mediator for tensions that arise between the constraints of the real world and our primitive desires.

Situating Intoxication within Sigmund Freud Theory My reading into Freudian theory depicts an underlying state of repression for man. Within this reading, I constructed a diagram which situates the concept of intoxicated space.

This intoxicated space and its marginal behaviours, I argue, sit crucially at the boundary between the moral pre-conscious of the Freudian Super-Ego and the instinctual & unconscious space of the Freudian ID. At this critical point human expression comes into contact with human repression, to form intoxicated behaviours of escapism and detachment, though the result is inherently a form of controlled intoxication, and only lies around the rigid socially accepted framework civilization has developed for itself.

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This is illustrated by the conventions that play out within the typology of the nightclub. Where you lose yourself though the club doesn’t lose you, crucially society doesn’t lose you. It is at this point where I searched further for other intoxicated states, and here is where the act of the rioting punctures through the framework of my own diagram. I began to situate these events within my own reading of Freud, situated at the point where expression breaks the framework of societal norm and drags a person into the realm of the impulse, the space of the ID, the space we are supposed to repress.

‘The Swarm’ Lukas Felzman

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Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti “For just as suddenly as it originates, the crowd disintegrates. In its spontaneous form is a sensitive thing. The openness, which enables it to grow, is, at the same time, its danger. A foreboding of threatening disintegration is always alive in the crowd. It seeks through rapid increase, to avoid this for as long as it can; it absorbs everyone, and, because it does, must ultimately fall to pieces. It seems as though movement of some of them transmits itself to the others, crowd expression, crowd power.”

Research Interest - Expression within the Intoxicated Crowd Following research into Freudian ideas of societal repression and the intoxication qualities of human escapism, expression and detachment, my research lead me to writings from Elias Canetti, who explores the power of crowd dynamics and crowd expression. Freudian ideas of human repression based within the expressive intoxicating quality of powerful crowds that Canetti illustrates led me to situate my reading and spatialize ‘intoxication’ within the events of the London Riots of 2011.

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Life - (Pre London Riots) Newspaper Headlines “The head-girl manner, the impeccable vowels, the earnest delivery – made her seem like any other privileged young woman. And her upbringing would appear to support that view: Raised in affluence in a £1 million home in Orpington, Kent, by her millionaire businessman father and his wife, she did well at grammar school and went on to study English and Italian at university.”

Moment - (London Riots) Judge Statement “She was vividly smiling when she was captured on CCTV at a petrol garage in Sydenham. She rebelled against her privileged lifestyle to throw herself into the “exciting world of booze, drugs and gangster rap”.

Aftermath - (Post London Riots) Barrister & Jury Statements “At the time of the offence, placing what she did against the background of who she is, this was completely out of character. she acted in a “moment of madness”.

“You revealed your weaker side to your character in taking advantage of an escalating situation because you thought you could get away with it & would not be caught.”

London Riots - The Intoxicated Individual My research focuses on one particular case of a millionaire’s daughter that participated in one of the looting frenzies of the London Riots. My research is very interested in how someone becomes so absorbed and intoxicated within a brief moment that a person ignores, forgets and disassociates his or her civilised self and obvious societal repercussions.

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London Riots - Intoxicated Crowd, Sam Jacob 12

“In the riots, we saw people in a state of agitated excitement, an atmosphere not characterised by the anger that might be traditionally associated with past riots, but a kind of delirious happiness and expression, something verging on the carnivalesque, even.�

Wrestle for Control

Re-appropriating the Street Rhythms

Momentum & Intensity

Crowd Formation

Searching for Adrenaline

LONDON RIOTS

Tottenham High Street - Adrenal Process Meets Spatial Environment Crowd Momentums & Intensities

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Detachment From Street

Repetitive Nature of Street Elements

Barriers Crowds Co-Opt Elements

Boundary Repetitive Glass Frontage

Street Linearity Forms Momentum

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown

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The drawing illustrates a breakdown of the spatial environment of a key area in the London Riots, Tottenham High Street. The study focuses on the rhythmic nature of the streets spatial setup and how this informs crowd dynamics, intensities and movements within the event.

Key Moments

Crowd Surge Uncontrolled

Street Rhythm Control

Adrenal Process Meets Spatial Environment London Riots Footage Mapping Mapping Moments within Rhythms & Intensities Following the process of unpacking theories from Sigmund Freud and Elias Canetti, I situated ‘Intoxication’ within the activities and events played out in the London Riots. I am interested in the adrenal processes played out within individuals within crowds to form mass expressions and activities that out of context would never happen. Following research, I undertook a map exercise; analysing crowd dynamics, intensities, and formations from CCTV footage. My research firstly reflected a dissolving and surging nature of the looting/rioting crowd, and an intensification process of crowd activity. The space of the riot is crucially not constructed for the events, but in the context they become appropriated forming new relationships between the crowd and spatial setting. A sense of boundary, edge and containment are vital for the intensities and momentums of the crowd, for the crowd to sustain itself.

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Protagonist Behaviour

Control & Surge

Wrestle for Control

Mimic Surge

Pockets of Impulse

Wrestle for Control

Mapping Key Crowd Moments Over Two Hour Interval

LONG TERM PLANNING

IMPULSE

MOTOR CORTEX

FRONTAL LOBES

PARIETAL LOBE

TEMPORAL LOBES

AMYGDALA

Increases Blood Pressure

Chemical Change in Brain

Increases Heart Rate 17

Left

Right

Logical Language Analytical Grammar Punctuation Sequential Detail Letters/ Numbers Decoding Short term (auditory) memory Thinks according to rules and patterns Fine motor Sense of time Planned Controls right side of body

Creative Pictures Intuitive Tonality Illustrations Simultaneous Big picture Symbols/ Spatial Encoding Long term (visual) memory Thinks outside of the square Gross motor No sense of time Spontaneous Controls left side of body

Adrenal Release - The Science & Link to Freudian Impulse

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The production of adrenaline facilitates a heightened and intoxicating state. Following the release of the adrenal hormone from the glands into the blood stream, causing changes in your brain. The release shifts blood flow away from the frontal lobes (the governor of long term planning) to the motor cortex, forming impulsive decisions, and an all-consuming urge to do something at the critical moment between thoughts of panic, and action. To me this natural process reflects the ideas of the impulsive Freudian ID and its opposing Ego & Super Ego states. This heightened state dismisses societal repression for total expression and impulse.

Colosseum

Greek Amphitheatre

Cattle Market

Pamplona Bull Run

Auction Room

Trading Pit Floor

Casino Floor

Gaming Conference

Algorithmic Crowd

Genealogy of Adrenal Architectures & Crowds - Intensities Over Time All of these spaces have a relationship between control and action. Each architecture is both set up to orchestrate and control the crowd’s momentum and intensity, at the level of the individual creating a form of hyper-focus formed from the adrenal process. Each space gives a platform for the production of the adrenal bodily process, a platform for expression, drives, urges, and a space where people go beyond what they originally expected to do.

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Chicago Open ‘Outcry’ Trading Pits - Market Making Crowds

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Following my research into multiple spatial environments that have the potential to deliberately influence the adrenal process, I focused my research towards the crowds within Chicago ‘Outcry’ Trading floor, where competitive market making crowds jostle for control. I was both fascinated with the relationships that play out between the spatial setting of the pit and the momentums, intensities, and constant surging and dissolving of the crowd, as well as the obvious bombardment of sound and visual stimulation for the trader bodily sensorium’s.

Primer ‘Testing Ground’ A View of All Saints Church, Newcastle The Feeling - Adrenaline What does that moment when we are overcome by impulse actually feel like? I asked colleagues for answers on the core experiential condition of adrenaline. “An urge, a focus, a heat-gain, a vibrating sensation, an all-consuming experience, a loss of control, complete panic, an intense feeling of being alive, a fleeting moment of focus, complete anxiety, and a change in perception.”

Two particular descriptions stood out; one described “a loss of an idea of where they were to the subconscious,” and another commented “a state of mind where the context appeared to drop away into a periphery.” My research was cumulated into a primer exhibition within All Saints Church, an event that formed a testing ground for developing ideas of intensities and heightened states around adrenaline, and how that might feel.

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Three TV Screens

Three Church Objects

Lighting Locations for Objects

Route Through Installation

All Saints Church - Installation Breakdown Using digital media, I recreated the core experiential condition that someone may feel when adrenalized, creating an all-consuming immersive experience.

To do this I created a digital over-stimulation of senses through the commodification of three room elements that were mapped onto three screens. Over the performance the elements gained momentum and intensity; moving, shifting and dancing between screens. Participants described an experience ‘where the context appeared to fall away into their sub-consciousness’ due to a form of hyper focus upon the digital. They also described an altering of self-perception in the space.

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THE ARCHITECTURE & HUMAN CONDITION

THE BODY/MIND CONDITION

STATE OF ‘FLOW’

RIOTER/LOOTER

TRADE PIT TRADER

Sudden Outburst Space Re-appropriated for Expression

Economic Platform Platform designed for Expression

CONTROLLED SPACES FOR DRIVES TO EMERGE FROM INTO EXPRESSION & PRODUCTIVELY USED

ARCHITECTURE DESIGNED TO GET PEOPLE TO LOSE SELF CONSCIOUSNESS

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Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “Flow is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. It is marked by a loss of self-consciousness, which does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self. What slips below the threshold of awareness is the concept of self, the information we use to represent to ourselves who we are. And being able to forget temporarily who we are seems to be very enjoyable.”

Flow - The Link Between Rioter & Trader

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When comparing the Chicago trading space to the events of the London Riots, both involve adrenalized crowds; both play out a wrestle for different forms of control; and through my mapping investigations both reflect relationships between the adrenal process and architecture, which leads to a critical reflection that architecture is equally important to the intensity of the crowd in the London Riots as it is to the act of trade in the Chicago ‘Outcry’ Floor. Participants of the London Riots create re-imagined relationships with their surroundings, surroundings that are attacked and swarmed around, forming adrenal bodily processes within the rioters. The architecture of the Chicago ‘Outcry’ Floor allows for the chaos of the crowd, but also controls through sight lines and hierarchies.

Bombardment of Stimulants

Clock Signifying Start & End of Market

The Tightness of Market Crowd

Market Making Volatility

Spatial Development of Markets

FORMATION

Marketplace - A Space for the Act of Trade Bargaining, Bartering Volatilities & Intensities

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Regular Clock Time Indicators

Impermanence of Market Stools

Architecture as Rigid Framework

Architecture of Sight-lines

Floor Plane Signifier of Spatial Hierarchies

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown 28

The drawing illustrates the spatial hierarchies of a market space; rigid architectural layout that controls the chaos of the bartering crowds, and clock time placed significantly at the roof plane, signifying the inevitability of the end of the day’s activities.

Pit - Encouraging the Gamble

Gate - Anticipated Wait

Precession - Towards the Spectacle

Parade - Before Spectacle

Spatial Development of Markets

DIVERSIFICATION

Cattle Market - A form of Diversified Market Parade, Precession, Ritual & Pit Architecture

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Clock & Spectator

Compressed Pit Form

Central Focus Cattle Pen

Anticipation Gate & Waiting System

Processional Compression of Space

Pre-Spectacle Precession & Parade

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown 30

The drawing illustrates my research into the spatial tactics and language found in cattle markets. It reflects upon the importance of clock time, the reliance on a central spatial focus formed by the pit architecture and the build-up process of intensity that take place before the auction, as well as the ritual and processional processes of cattle parade.

Between Volatility & Order

Hierarchical Design - Deal Efficiency

Frenzied Market Making Crowd

Aftermath - Physical & Visual Signs of an Event

Spatial Development of Markets

CATHEDRAL OF CAPITALISM Open ‘Outcry’ Trading Floor (Chicago Board of Trade) Spatial Separation between product & trade + Relationship Between Body/Crowd & Place

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Clock at Highest Point Market Signifier

Market Volatility organised within screen

Entrance Drop Down into Pit

Hierarchy Orchestrates the Deal

Pit Form Competitive Hierarchies within Pit

Raised Floor Ability for Pits to be Adapted

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown 32

The drawing illustrates my research into the spatial formations found in the Chicago ‘Open Outcry’ Trading Pits. A form of trading which thrived on the tension between the chaos and volatility of capitalism and the order it requires, a space that fuelled divisions, hierarchies and a vehement defence of space.

Floor Now Only a Circulation Route

Introduction of Screens within Pit

New Dividing Insertion into Pit

Pit Floor Separated Over Two Tiers

Spatial Development of Markets

TRADING FLOOR TO PEN Hybrid Trading - The Formation of the Trading Pen Technology Fracturing Trade Floor Crowd Dynamics + Increased Internalised Focus

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Circulation Detached from Pit

Clock Position now less significant + smaller scale

Internalised Focus on 360 Degree Screen Formation

Furniture Divide A new Space to Sit

Trade Floor divided into Smaller Pen Formations

Raised Pit Floor Re-Adapted

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown

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The drawing illustrates my research into the development of the spatial formations found in the Chicago Board Options Exchange. It reflects technology starting to break down the hierarchies of the trading space, reducing sight lines across entire trade floor, increasing space between each trader and an overall reduction of trader movement across pit due to the addition of trading screens, desks and chairs, and dividing elements.

Introduction of the Detached Spectator

Uninspiring Trade Floor Entrance

Market Volatility Neatly Encased

Trading Floor Passiveness

Spatial Development of Markets

ABSTRACTION & SEAMLESSNESS Electronic Automated Trading - Abstraction of Place,Crowd & Place Placeless Market, Space of the Machine & Spectating Analysts

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Ticker Replaces Clock at the Symbolic Highest Point

Glass Box Detached Spectators

Algorithmic Volatility held within Neat Screen Rows

Entrance Now only a Level Threshold

Screens disconnection between traders & rest of floor

Perverted Architectural Trace of Original Pit

Separation of Floor, Pit & Trader

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown

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The drawing illustrates my research into the spatial formations found in the Deutsche Borse Trade Floor. The development of market spaces has challenged the human foundation of the market. Traders are now typically isolated from one another behind their screens and desks. Pit hierarchical architecture and frantic crowds have been removed and replaced by aesthetic seamlessness, level entrances and isolated trading booths.

Market Making Machines

Disconnection & Distance

Abstracted Traders

‘Anywhere’ Offices & Hidden Connections

Spatial Development of Markets

BEYOND HUMAN COMPREHENSION High Frequency Trading Rooms Body, Place and Crowd Disembodied from Market + Market Machinist Acceleration

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Trading Desk Only Access to Market Barrier

Trading Offices Nondescript Hidden Market Connections

Connection Between Market & Market Analysts

Placelessness Disconnected Data Centre

Axonometric - Hierarchical Space Breakdown

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The drawing illustrates my research into the current condition of High Frequency Trading.

It represents the growing detachment between the information centre (space of trading servers and now the space of markets) and the trade rooms where traders are typically isolated from one another behind their screens, making the connection to the market for traders only through screens and hidden infrastructure.

Formation - Marketplace

Cathedral of Capitalism - Open Outcry Trading

Abstraction - Electronic Automated Trading

Diversification - Cattle Market

Floor to Pen - Hybrid Trading

Beyond Comprehension - High Frequency Trading

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Development of Physical Space of Markets - Accelerated & Abstracted Worlds

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My research illustrates the development of the physical space of markets, from the original formation of the marketplace for the act of trade to the current accelerated algorithmic and mechanic worlds of High Frequency Trading. The development has seen clock time replaced by the continuous ticker displays. The markets have now become placeless, abstracted and separated away from market people and market crowds.

XXXX.XXX, Addie Wagenknecht Transmediale Festival 2017

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Gerald Nestler, Transmediale Festival Berlin 2017 “The power of finance has developed to such a point that it is now not representational, power used to be representational, it was all about representation. Finance and capital now does not give a damn about representation, there are no nice images that tell you something, or tell you why it’s so powerful.”

Berlin Study Trip Criticality The Algorithmic Market Machine

Following studies into the development of markets and the act of trade, we visited Transmediale festival in Berlin. The festivals agenda was focused around the relationship between the machines and humans. Regarding trading, finance and capital, I am critical of Gerald’s remark given on a panel discussion. My argument is firstly that the structure of capital has always been based and materialized on representation to create forms of trust. Representation has always been embedded within it, which is experienced, and backed up by some physical form.

Secondly, there is still an accumulation of value in structural, physical objects with a communicative capacity within capital; this is why financial districts and towers of capital are still accumulated into physical built representational objects.

My project is interested in how as architects we might both materially and programmatically make physical the market machine. In doing so, materialize multiple forms of experience in systems of accelerated capital. Addie Wagenknecht’s installation makes an obvious and powerful relationship between us and machine.

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Chicago Board of Trade Building - View Down La Salle Street Following the study of the development of the physical market space, I then began a detailed study into the specifics of the Chicago Outcry Trading Floor experience. Studying how the market traders there become the adrenalized market risk takers. I unpacked the ritual, experiential and spatial processes of the Chicago Trading experience that form a series of detachments towards the peak intensity of the trading floor.

Analysing the importance of each process for the Chicago trader and how as a series of moments they induce the buildup of the bodily adrenal processes experienced by the traders.

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Chicago Traders (Photos from left to right) Jody Micheal “The Bustler” Peter “Zap” Chelemengos Marty Venit ‘“Danny” Alves

De-constructing the Bodily Adrenal Trading Experience Drawing Through Trader Experiences The research into Chicago culminated in a set of montages that illustrated each key moment in the Chicago trading experience. As well as this, I produced a long linear sequenced drawing, which illustrates the totality of experiential, spatial and ritual detachment processes that the Chicago traders went through. The research drew out an understanding of the importance on spatial sequencing and orchestration for the Chicago trading environment, this in order to build adrenaline and anticipation within the market crowd, to increase volatility and in doing so capital.

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Adrenal Build-Up “Becoming Intoxicated” A - (6:00AM) Street Procession - “Facade and Iconography of La Salle Street” B - (6:25AM) The Barbershop Individual C - (7:00AM) Security - “An Obvious Border” D - (7:10AM) The Vaults - “Depositing of Possessions and Outside Self ”

Trader Quotes “An enormous clock hung under the eaves of the most prominent gable, lending a modern touch, and reminding Chicagoan’s of the connection between time and money.”

“Such a difference to the calm grand lobby when I enter the space of the guarded turnstile, a real compression of space, a real threshold, a queue forms waiting for the escalators, anticipation begins,”

Research My research into the heightened state of adrenal and the bodily process played out through the spaces of Chicago recognizes a build up to peak-heightened state. The spaces illustrated in the montages are all crucially related to that moment of trading. The spaces begin the trajectory of adrenaline across time, clock time is always prominent in the build-up trader spaces (entrance, barber, security and vaults).

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Adrenal Build-Up “Becoming Intoxicated” E - (7:30AM) Circulation - “Endless Corridors & Coffee Franticity” F - (7:45AM) Desk - “Space for Self & Contradiction of Place” G - (8:20AM) Coat Store - “Becoming the Trader” H - (8:30AM) “Entering the Trading Pit”

Trader Quotes “I arrived at 6:45am & proceeded through the endless network of corridors and elevators to the firms office, you could feel the franticity and anticipation in those corridors” “I then would settle into my war room, my trading office, it was the only place in the entirety of the building that had any references to my outside life, a life not as a trader, a risk taker.”

Research The following four montages again show more build up spaces of the trading experience, right up to the queuing at the pit entrance. This formal colonnade space led traders into a compressed threshold at the entry point of the expansive trading hall. There was not just spatial tactics at play here but ritual ones. Traders would dress in specific trading jacket colourations and wear numbered badges, this adding to the series of detachment processes to becoming the frenetic Chicago trader.

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Adrenal Peak “Peak State of Intoxication” I - (9:00AM) “The Pandemonium of the Trading Pit”

Trader Quotes “This was an infamously lucrative, stressful job characterized by ruthless competition, fraternal camaraderie and the frenzied screaming and hand signalling among men (and a few select women) exchanging billions of dollars worth of commodities per day.”

“The starting bell would ring and the markets would open and there would be an eruption of noise. Just an absolute groundswell.”

“The trading floor was a breathtaking beehive of activity, especially on busy days you could literally watch the markets move, action drifted from one pit to the other.”

“Some traders were making $1.75 per trade and filling 2,000 contracts a day. Others were making $4000 per day. So they didn’t care if the market went up, down or sideways - they wanted volatility.”

Research Following the build-up processes between experiential, ritual, and spatial, my research illustrates the peak-heightened state of traders in Chicago. The trading floor was a space for the crowd, the body, it was an attack on the senses, traders had to reach peak focus ‘Flow’ to better other traders in the chaos and frenzy of the pits. This was a competitive, adrenalized crowd, and an intoxicating environment.

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Adrenal Release “Decline of Intoxication” J - (6:00PM) “View over the City”

Traders Quotes “The notoriously high-stress pressures in the pits created the hard-partying commodity futures pits and the work hard, play hard culture.”

“We were making a lot of money for guys in their 20s, so we had fun. I spent it on cars, trips, booze, blondes.”

“Work would end and you’d race to get a good seat at the bar — Stocks and Blondes, Blackie’s, Alcock’s [no relation], Merc Club. Broker’s Inn — they’d fill your glass near to the top with booze, then put your mixer in.”

“It was not uncommon to leave early on Friday, hop in a cab to O’Hare, walk up to the ticket window and buy three first class tickets to Vegas (no luggage, paying cash).

They’d party all Friday night, maybe get a room Saturday, Sunday take the red eye back to Chicago and show up to work on Monday in the same clothes they wore on Friday.”

Research My research into the heightened state of adrenal, and the bodily process played out through the spaces of Chicago recognizes a build up to peak-heightened state, a state of flow in trading hours. As well as this and key to the totality of adrenal experience in Chicago there are subsequent stages of decline and release of the peak state. The montage illustrates two traders drinking following a frantic day in the pits. This was a regular form of release for trader and release formed a substantial part of the trading culture, a stopgap between trader and outside person.

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Adrenal Aftermath “Decline of Intoxication” K- (7:45PM) “Crash Back to Reality”

Traders Quotes “It was like playing in the world’s highest stakes poker game. Every day. You become into it for the risk alone. And to go home after that and try to be a real person and cook dinner … it was so hard to be two different people. It’s hard to talk mundane details with your girlfriends when you have $1 million at risk.”

Research The final stage of my Chicago research illustrates the aftermath; the outside or home life of traders; the reality away from the adrenal processes found in the Chicago Trading experience.

This other side to the trader is in stark contrast to the frenetic trader. The montage illustrates the quote above from one of the traders. This forms an equally important part of my research, as in its monotony it exaggerates the heightened state.

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Clock Screen

Other Traders

Market Intensity Development Chicago ‘Open Outcry’ Trade Floor Mapping Mapping Trader Sight lines - Architectural Orchestration Following my research into the development of the physical space of markets, I began a mapping study comparison between the trading crowd in the Chicago Pits and the traders in the Deutsche Borse floor.

With this comparative study I wanted to analyse crowd intensities and movements in both trading spaces, and through close and rigorous mapping analyse how the architecture informs those intensities through sight lines. The study reflected the intensities of the trader views, and reflected how the pit architecture sets up clear sight lines between the different deal maker components (broker, trader, and runner) despite the chaos of the crowd. I also mapped the dynamics of the crowd across six minutes of footage; it clearly reflects the circulation and movement intensities between the pit and the rest of the floor. It appears that the space thrives on a cusp between the chaos of the crowd and the controlling of its architecture to form efficient trading lines.

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1 Minutes

4 Minutes

2 Minutes

5 Minutes

3 Minutes

6 Minutes

Mapping Crowd Movement - Intensities & Chaos

Trade Floor Screen

Trader Screen

Architectural Focus

Market Intensity Development Frankfurt Deutsche Borse Trade Floor Mapping Mapping Trader Sight lines - Architectural Orchestration This study of trading footage sets up a comparison with the Chicago ‘Open Outcry’ Trading Floor. As with Chicago, I mapped the intensity and movement of the trading crowds in Frankfurt as well. I also repeated a mapping of trader views and sight lines across the trading space from the footage period above, again giving particular attention to how the architecture orchestrates this trader views.

Fundamentally my research reflects a decline in crowd intensity in comparison to the crowds of Chicago, this is reflected in the reality of mapping being taken over an hour and not six minutes as with the previous. Regarding the study of trader sight lines, it illustrated a much narrower focus and field of vision shown from traders, reflecting a general detachment between the space of trade (trading desk) and the rest of the trading floor, this is in contrast to the interconnectivity of the pits.

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10 Minutes

40 Minutes

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50 Minutes

30 Minutes

60 Minutes

Mapping Crowd Movement - Intensities & Chaos

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Out of The Pits, Caitlin Zaloom “The CBOT building created markets by arranging bodies and communications in space. It was a place of intense bodily sociality, configuring and adjusting one’s body and mind to the market’s rhythms was necessary in order to gain full access to its interior. In the pits, the traders lived the markets in their bodies and voices. Chicago has always thrived on the tension between the chaos of capitalism and the order it requires.”

“The market in the traders view strips away the social veneer of human decision making to expose an unadulterated economic core. Traders say that being in the market brings them closer to the maverick, uncompromising spirit they associate with human nature, as if the market strips away the pretences of society.”

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Deutsche BorseTrade Floor Out of The Pits, Caitlin Zaloom “Here was a market beyond human control, dominated by super-fast machines running complex computer algorithms that jostled and fought each other at the level of milliseconds, microseconds – and with no meaningful oversight. The familiar cliché of gaudily dressed men waving arms on a stock market floor was history: trading now happened within black boxes housed in highly secure, unmarked “data farms”.

“High-frequency traders are typically isolated from one another behind their screens. The silence might be broken by a mechanical ‘fill’ sound: in some firms, software simulating the sound of an old-school cashier chimes each time one of the traders’ algorithms earns a solid profit.”

“The visibility created by the architecture of the pit has been replaced by a machinist constellation, and there’s a Growing detachment between bodies and markets, rendering the operations of the latter largely independent of bodily aspects.”

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“Algorithmic Surrealism”, Ben Scott.

Accelerated Capital Intensities and Intoxication

“In the time it takes you to read this sentence, a high-frequency trading (HFT) algorithm, connected to a stock exchange via “low latency” trading infrastructure, could make, perhaps, 1,000 trades.”

My research illustrates an accelerated market due to the mechanic world of algorithmic trading. The acceleration of intensities is not only in the trading environment, but also within the wider context of shopping, consumerism, and exchange, through the de-materialization and digitalization of money and culture. With the rise of consumer culture and the inability for any other viable alternatives, contemporary culture is bound by the marketplace, a space where acceleration and intensification rules. Within our contemporary shopping condition, volatility of sale time consumption, culture of panic buying and flash crashes have seen events like black Friday becoming the norm; events that intensify the gears of capitalist consumption.

“I say ‘perhaps’, because it really depends on how long you pause on those commas I put in the sentence. If you’re an individual with great respect for commas you might give the algorithm a chance to throw in a few hundred more orders.”

Unpacking the Wider Context - Accelerated Capital

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“HyperNormalisation” BBC documentary, Adam Curtis “The future is always to some extent uncertain, but never more so than right now.....

“Disruption is the new normal” ‘HyperNormalisation’ tells the extraordinary story of how we got to this strange time of great uncertainty and confusion. Uncertainties and the unthinkable have become the norm, events like ‘Brexit’, the electoral success of Trumps ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks I argue, are examples that reflect uncertainty, and it feels as though our uncertainty is rising exponentially. As well as market and capital acceleration, my research has unpacked the wider political and cultural uncertainty, and reflects a tipping point, a world of confusion and complication.

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Growing Cultural Uncertainty - Brexit, Trump & Hypernormalisation

“Wolf of Wall Street” & “The Big Short” Films directed by Martin Scorsese & Adam Mckay All of these environments are tied to the increasingly precarious economic system of Late Stage Capitalism and its cylindrical volatile boom and bust cycles. My research recognises the repetitive crises nature of capitalism. Within this post-global financial crisis condition has grown uncertainty and formed a difficult moment for trust, allied to an intensification and acceleration in all spaces of capital, which binds contemporary culture of the consumer society.

This volatile and accelerated condition is best illustrated in the events of the Flash Crash of May 2010, in which $1 trillion was wiped off the value of markets in the space of 10 minutes. This is considered the most dramatic crash in stock market history and occurred within only 10 minutes. Welcome to the world of High frequency Trading.

Growing Economic Uncertainty - Financial Crash, Flash Crash & Capitalist Boom & Bust

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Shopping Market

Trading Market

Betting Market

Combine Markets

Capital Intoxication All my research has suggested both an acceleration and intensification of markets, from trading, to shopping to betting. I have traced an adrenal intoxicating quality through the development of spaces of capital (markets). The accelerated relationship between all the research falls under the umbrella of consumerism, commodity and exchange. My provocation then becomes ‘Capital intoxication’ which will see me blur and collapse betting, trading and shopping into a totalizing experience, an experience that can be consumed, and importantly, be intoxicating. Blurring the experience of all spaces into one, a space where the betters, traders and the shoppers, can become intoxicated.

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Blurring Markets Programmatically & Experientially = Capital Intoxication

Process of Detachment (Chicago Research)

Co-Existing With Existing Structure (Chicago Research)

Stability & Trust in Markets (Market Acceleration Research)

Impermanence of Shop Fronts (Market Acceleration Research)

Market Development Research Provocation

RECONNECTION

21st Century Late Capitalist Trading Floor Re-establishing Place, Crowd and Human Comprehension of Market Machine

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Research Provocation Criticality & Intentions

Criticality - Body proximity not important, human body and its relation to market rhythm obsolete - Trading without human intervention, process independent of bodily aspects.

- Body as a sensory instrument tied to rhythms of market and total immersion not needed.

- Traders have become analytical external participants, where algorithms designed to detect and respond not humans.

- Boom & Bust: Increasing volatility and instability, and we do not even control that.

Intentions - Re-establish the crowd and body back into the market, whilst introducing the other, performance over representation.

- Bringing human comprehension back to the markets. Address the human/machine condition.

- Challenging finances dissociation with place by situating and co-existing within contemporary market place (Eldon Square Shopping Centre) - Bring physicality and materiality back into financial experience/interface.

- Re-imagine an intoxicating and immersive trading market environment

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A space for Capital Intoxication within Eldon Square, Newcastle Global into the Local - Testing Ground Model My plan is to situate a trading and betting zone within a space of commodity exchange whilst situating the local into the global condition of contemporary market place (shopping malls). The plan is to blur shopping, betting, and trading under the umbrella of capital and the activity of capitalism, making each a consumable commodity in its own right. Trading and gambling becomes its own consumable thing, for all the public. The intention is to normalize this relationship into the global condition of the shopping environment. The question then becomes, ‘where do I situate the intervention?’ Following extensive research into the statistics and spaces of major inner city shopping centres around the country I chose Newcastle’s Intu Centre .

It boasts the 9th biggest shopping centre in the UK, and has the 5th largest yearly footfall. Due to its centrality and inner city location it is primely placed next to all the connections in and out of the city, from city Metro links, major bus terminals and central train station. Newcastle is a regional capital, it has generic capacities and global properties, and it is a major city with the added bonus of not having many cities around it creating an obvious pull factor in the North East. Also, it doesn’t have any other other major ‘inner city shopping centre’ within 100 miles (closest being Leeds Victoria), so it retains a major shopping and commercial pull factor. Newcastle is also known for being a beta testing ground for new goods, equipment and consumables. The intent is to test this new trading zone model within Newcastle, Intu Centre, but then the model could be taken across the country, to other major inner city shopping centres.

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Platform Capitalism, Nick Srnicek “What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of ‘platform capitalism.”

This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post–capitalist future.”

Future Provocation - Northern Stock Exchange Increased Dissolved Powers & Deregulated Trading The graphic on the left illustrates google (a global company) and its scattered peripheral offices across the globe. It reflects the reality that large global companies and social media platforms are firstly inherently global, but key to this argument is that they are distributed everywhere, to peripheral cities. Not only google, but market trading firms are also an example of this. They are situated globally and locally, and my provocation is that Newcastle could be one of the peripheral offices, where trading firms set up a smaller office.

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ELDON LEISURE

ELDON FOOD

UPPER LEVEL

ELDON GARDENS

LOWER LEVEL

Sport

Cafe

Food & Drink

Tailors

Barbers

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Intu Centre Zoning

(Photos from left to right) New Grey’s Food Quarter Eldon Gardens Cafe & Restaurant Space Eldon Square St Andrew’s Way High End Development Eldon Leisure - Sports Centre

Site Selection -’Total Environment’ A pragmatic reason for choosing Eldon Square is that it already has the entire subsidiary build up and release programmatic elements that made the Chicago trading experience (barbers, tailors, food & drink, cafe, sport) and it has the entire infrastructure already in place to support it. My research recognizes the build-up, peak and release of the heightened state of adrenaline. Each space is important to the construction of that trading moment, these subsidiary spaces are vital to form the totalizing experience found within Chicago. My intention is to tap into these existing conditions within Eldon Square, as well as adding a betting and trading zone and the relevant subsidiary programs. The ‘Trading Zone’ will add yet another zone to the existing Intu Centre experience (High End, Sports, Food, and Shopping). My addition will further strengthen the totalizing shopping experience, whilst conforming to the shopping centres centrality model. An example of a ‘total environment’ is within the Google office template, which attempts to form a total environment through the blurring of play, work, home and office.

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Handyside Market

Groat Market

Bigg Market

Green Market

Fish Market

Fish Market

Grainger Market

Eldon Square Shopping

Eldon Gardens Finanical Market 75

Newcastle’s Original Markets (Photos from left to right) Handyside Market (Demolished for Eldon Garden Development) Grainger Market (Fully Functioning) Fish Market (Market Closed) Green Market (Demolished as part of Eldon Square Development)

Site Selection - ‘Central Market Model’ Cities were often constituted around their markets; Chicago was built around its stock market, and surrounding industries grew and fed into it as it too grew. The image on the left maps out the existing and original markets across Newcastle. It also illustrates over time how these city markets have fared, some like Green and Handyside market have been demolished for newer markets (Eldon Square & Gardens), whilst others like Grainger Market have remained. My plan is to centralize the financial markets by re-establishing the market centre (now space of servers) within the same space as the traders, bringing in differing trading firms on to one interconnected floor. In addition, I intend to centralize betting, shopping and trading into one consumable package, blurring the boundaries between all activities under the umbrella of capital intoxication, this all forms a central market model.

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Zones L - Eldon Gardens M - Eldon Leisure N - St Andrews Way O - Grey’s Quarter

Anchors H - Fenwicks I - John Lewis J - Next K- Debenhams

Circulation F - Atrium Nodes G - Circulation Routes

Connections A - Eldon Square Parking B - Newcastle Bus Station C - Eldon Gardens Parking D - Monument Metro Link

Newcastle Intu Centre - (Eldon Square) Zones, Anchors & Nodes The Intu shopping company has a clear strategy on how they plan their commercial space, this is done through creating destinations, zones, anchors at strategic locations, as well as a focus on smooth visitor circulation strategies through atrium’s and nodal access routes.

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Densify Program - Tower & Atrium

Inhabit as Program - Wing

Volumetric study that explores the densification of program into a tower, this will be situated in the main atrium and circulation route. However, with this strategy there is an issue with circulation and connection between atrium and a potential tower, with the tower typology and its small footprint.

Volumetric study that recognizes zoning and anchor strategy of shopping centre companies in forming a destination. A site strategy and space planning within modus operandi of a shopping centre company, in search of normalizing trading within the shopping experience ‘Trading Zone’. Inhabit the way Intu would occupy space, and subtly operate in the mode of them, falling into their way of planning space, with zones and anchors. Eldon Garden forms the trading wing, developing the existing state of the zone.

Site Strategy - Volumetric Studies

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Disperse Program - Planes & Nodes

Hybrid Program - Atrium’s & Wing

Volumetric study that maps out the key existing areas and occupies those areas (atrium’s). Strategy looks to dispersed program along a sequenced plane and relies on connections to existing atrium’s. However, this will result in a default in areas of program taken onto the roof to avoid the carving up of the existing shopping centre circulation.

Volumetric study that explores a relationship between forming and concentrating my focus on a new wing (Eldon Garden), as well as reprogramming key circulation nodes of the rest of Intu Centre. To accomplish this, the strategy will use digital means, and looks to form relationships between the shoppers and the building program from outside the wing.

Main Circulation Routes

Site Strategy

Atrium’s

Site Strategy Selected - Inhabit & Normalize I have chosen the ‘Inhabit & Normalize’ site strategy that will look to plan out space within the modus operandi of a shopping centre company, in search of normalizing a trading and betting zone within the totality of the shopping experience. This intent will see me situate my proposal within a wing/zoning strategy. My program will inhabit the centre in a way that the shopping company would intend for it to be, and subtly operate in the mode of them. I will create a new atrium within existing Eldon Garden site to better link the existing multiple levels of that section of the shopping centre to ground floor level as well as my program. This will form a more fluid, interconnected wing that ties into the rest of the centres circulation strategy and visitor footfall patterns.

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Eldon Gardens Bridge Connection

Eldon Gardens as a Wing - A Failing Zone Within the existing Eldon Garden zone many shop units are just dormant, empty commercial space. This is due to a lack of visitor footfall from the rest of the Intu Centre. This would form an obvious best location for my intervention. The intervention would look to reconnect this area back into the shopping centre as well as street level, and would fit into the shopping strategy of zoning and re-imagining a space that is currently failing.

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Eldon Gardens Failing Zone

Existing New Trader Route Build Up Intensity Peak Intensity Release Intensity Commercial

Building Strategy - Diagrammatic Programmatic Section This diagrammatic section starts to illustrate my thoughts on how I am situating my research into Eldon Garden/Intu Centre, embedded within the existing structure and situating the different programmatic elements that make up my research into the build-up, peak and release states of adrenal intoxication within spaces of capital. The key area of this drawing is the importance placed on the bet shop; it becomes the programmatic link between the shopper and trader, a space for anyone to make gambles and trades, and it sits within the core of the atrium.

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Monument Metro Link Site Route Above Existing Programmatic Elements

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Building Strategy - Diagrammatic Programmatic Plan This diagrammatic plan illustrates my thinking into the trader journey towards the entrance of the building, reflective of my research on how this adrenal process starts before you enter the building. It looks at how I could tap into existing programmatic elements of the Intu Centre (barbers, tailors, and cafĂŠs) and form a route above and within the existing shopping centre for traders from the main metro link.

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Formal Dome Roof Structure

Grand Banking Wall Structure

Insertion Trade/Bet Zone

Processional Entrance & Back of House to Front of House

Existing Roof Light Structure Retained

Central Model Basement Server & Data Centre

Design Development - Insertion within Existing

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This spread shows an initial design, based on my thoughts around intensities and dealing within an existing context. The mechanical language of the design is influenced by the Manchester Royal Opera House, where one structure is inserted within another larger structure.

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Design Development Detailed Design As well as the larger building design, these drawing reflect my initial detailed thinking. Both drawings show an entrance design, this processional, and grand entrance is based within the research from Chicago. Though the entrance deliberately funnels people through the back of house (server area), and by blurring these relationships the design starts to form new experiences between people and this place of market.

Concrete

Terrazzo

Glass Brick

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Pamphlet Design - Materializing a Relationship between Intensity & Trust

Technical Declaration - Architecture of Trust The project has explored intensities within spaces of capital and how that can lead to a heightened state of adrenal intoxication. My project also recognises the accelerated and abstracted market condition; a condition that challenges the human relationship with the market, whether we trust as well as comprehend it.

In response, the project challenges how we might experience these high frequency intensities of capital, its volatile, intoxicating peaks and troughs. This is done through realizing a relationship between the accelerated purely experiential intensities of capital, and an architectural materialization of that market.

My interest in the Chicago Open Outcry trading environment recognise that High frequency trading is the current form of trading; however I am critical of this accelerated disconnection of market. The project provocates a 21st century trading floor, what it might look like, and how we might experience and trust it.

This has led me to challenge the possibilities of shifting from the inadequate rhetorical aesthetic and programmatic response of openness and transparency typical of spaces of capital and finance to a new idea and architecture of trust, experience and immersion around its increasing volatile intensities. The project strategy looks to form critical relationships between intensity and trust, established in response to the culture and economy of uncertainty and acceleration.

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Closed Design - Solidity A design that originally signified wealth, security, safety and virtue trust is placed within its impregnability to deposit. Imposing physical assets signalled that a bank was reliable and discreet, a bank that could be trusted, depositors knew their money was safe and borrowers knew money could be found. Its monumental gravity helped to underwrite the every credit it made available.

1694, Bank of England

Open Design - Transparency A design that represents hospitality, community, honesty and transparency. Trust is formed through its employees as a place to transact our financial affairs, bankers could be trusted to treat customers fairly, competently and benevolently, and provide a variety of personal services in addition to just taking out cash (investment advice) – personal assets not physical assets. Glass communicates an image of speed, the sheer amount of it communicates capital acceleration.

1953 Manufacturers Hanover Trust Office

Retail Design - Adaptation A design of banks and spaces of capital that is increasingly associating meaning to the high street, adopting familiar languages from retail architecture.

One example of this point is the reality that advertising and posters often paper over the windows of banks, offering the latest financial ‘products’,

Solidity, Transparency & Retail Adaptation Development of Trust in Capital

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Deutsche Bรถrse Trading Room, Frankfurt

Flagship 02 Store, London

The Seamlessness of Contemporary Capital The three photos the left, reflect the common seamless material quality found across spaces of capital, from a trading floor to a phone shop to a high street bank. These spaces all hold material commonalities. What is interesting here is my research has unpacked the accelerated and seamless world of markets, within these spaces of exchange trade and capital, the material quality references this seamlessness.

Barclays Bank, London

The seamless reality based within the development of capital and the development of our association with trust is where my interest lies. How in these spaces, through material specification and material meaning they materialize a form of contemporary consumer faith and trust.

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Contemporary Capital Material Inventory I undertook research into spaces of contemporary capital (shops), photographing and recording the materials used within these spaces, paying particular focus on their junctions and connections.

The Materials used in these spaces all have a seamless quality to them, they are smooth, glitzy, shiny and are finished with bevelled edges. The material qualities are found both within the contemporary high street bank interior, as well as all high street phone shops. What is interesting here is the interiors of these spaces are mimicking the technological products in which they sale or use. This is shown in the larger photo below, the shop display stand has the same visual material qualities as the phone and this reality appears to be a common trait across all these spaces. The material displays in these instances are referring to the accelerated and seamless machine world of contemporary capital.

Due to the fact that these materials are used throughout all these spaces of capital, there is a definite argument to suggest that a contemporary capital material inventory exists and with that a trusted and accepted association to contemporary capital.

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Crystal Houses, Chanel Store MVRDV Amsterdam 2016

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Immersion & Inversion A New Form of Trust in Capital My research has led me to explore the development of trust in capital from solidity, to transparency and now towards retail architectural adaptation. The research has also illustrated the accelerated and materially seamless world of contemporary capital. However, I am critical of our relationship to contemporary capital and markets, a disconnection has developed between market and people.

I am interested in forming new relationships and human comprehension to the accelerated and digitalized market place through a design and material strategy.

Firstly, my design looks to immerse people within the market, to create experiences with the intoxicating intensities and realities of the global marketplace. One aspect of experience towards the market is trust, how in the context of capital materials have associated cultural values and meanings attached to them. My project looks to invert those associations and expectations of materials and their contemporary application within spaces of capital.

To invert those relationships between what we expect materials to do, to counter the seamless myth of contemporary capital.

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Altered Shift in Materials Crystal Houses This project has an obvious reference to transparency reflecting the overwhelming desire of global brands and capital for that material reference to transparency. However, I am interested in what is illustrated at the gradient junction between glass and terracotta brick. This example reflects a material inversion, the strategy I am exploring through design to form new relationships to contemporary capital.

The precedent plays on trusted and material expectations and explores the moment where the two materials bleed into each other, the stitching of new material applications and associations within existing to form a hybrid relationship.

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Entrance - ‘A Back of House’ Inversion My design incorporates a formal processional entrance based on my research into Chicago and how it impacts traders psyche. This main axial circulation route punctures through a crowd of market servers, causing people get a sense of a compression of data. This cabled entrance is a programmatic inversion, having flipped the ‘back of house’ (data centre & servers) to become the front of house, exposing the realities of high frequency trading, market machine reality. This is also a flip on the red carpet glitzy feel of contemporary capital; with this we have red escalators and guild plated slip resistant edge treatment, a play between the monotony of slip resistant and escalator floor finish and high end material expectations.

The perspective also reflects the cross section of ‘intoxicated people’ that would use this totalizing space of capital intoxication. As the trader arrives early for a day of trading, others are leaving, a little worse for wear after a night out and a ‘flutter’.

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Axonometric Processional Space & Compression of Data 97

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Entrance Moments - Material Inversion

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Glass - Solidity & Mass

Marble - Veneer & Rail System

1 - Glass Brick & Transparent high strength adhesive 2- Aluminium Server Racking Framework

1 - Existing Concrete column & Beam Structure 2 - New 250mm Concrete floor slab system 3- Carrara marble tile Veneer 4 - Internal Cladding rail system & framework

The application of glass is often if not always used within the contemporary shopping environment as a slender pane that mediates the shopper and the products behind. In this case the shopper sees the servers over products, the glass acting as a mediator for the experience between the flashing market making server machines and the public. Key here to this detail moment is the use of glass bricks over a glass pane. Its mass gives the illusion on structural integrity, added by it sitting on the structural line, underneath the existing concrete structural system. It gives a visual appearance of mass and solidity, loading, and compression. Re-establishing the traditional shopping facade, instead of the planal contemporary shop facade, familiar window details but using glass instead of ornate metalwork or woodwork.

The centrally positioned servers are sat on top of a raised marble plinth, within an encasement of glass.

Attaching and symbolizing a higher power, reflecting where power actually lies in contemporary capital.

The servers are positioned deliberately and abruptly against the main axial escalator route, forcing people to experience and comprehend where there intoxication comes from. However, this material treatment is just a cladding and rail system. Marble tiles are hung from a metal framework giving the illusion of contemporary glitz and glamour and associated beliefs in solidity, but the reality is different; seamlessness is just a veneer.

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Build-up of Adrenaline - ‘Dynamism & Destabilization’ From my research, I have been critical of the current condition of most high frequency trading offices, office designs that hide connections, create disconnected traders and have no sense of arrival and threshold, as you would expect upon entry of the Chicago Board of Trade building. My design situates the pit (betting & trading space) above the atrium; from below, a viewer can see the underbelly of the pit, and its distinct octagonal form. The build-up space, (atrium) connects the original site (Eldon Garden) back into the rest of the shopping centre as well as ground level, it also connects my intervention into the rest of the building fabric.

This is an important processional space leading people on towards the pit, gym, carpark, offices & bars, it has an circulation intensity of its own.

The perspective portrays an overstimulating atmosphere much like the duty free spaces you find in airports, where the products and brandings are forced upon people; they form circulation routes, routes that are sequenced and orchestrated towards sale time intensity.

The external envelope of the atrium is set out from classical bank proportions, this classical spatial reference to capital sets up a scale, power and proportion in which I have destabilised and designed into within the ideas of inversion. At the lowest level, the classical portions create a strong circulation axis and sightlines for shoppers, fitting into the circulation tactics of shopping centres. But with each rising floor level, the floor plate and circulation shifts around the octagonal form of the pit, each floor level shift is sequenced to form a dynamic atrium space, maximising views and circulation intensities, and inverting and destabilising classical associations towards spaces of capital.

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Axonometric Atrium - The Adrenal Build-Up 101

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Build-Up Moments - Destabilizing Accepted & Trusted Associations A Ceiling Tile Inversion

The Untidy Reality of Acceleration

1 - Fibre Reinforced Concrete Ceiling Tile 2- Suspended Ceiling Hanging System

Within all spaces of contemporary capital such as banks and shopping centres, through material specification and the importance of the product, other building components such as ceilings has become focused around seamlessness, and blankness. My intervention inverts our trusted associations with ceiling tiles, and uses fibre reinforced 40mm concrete as a tile. We trust concrete as a structural material, I propose to flip our expectations of concrete as a structural element towards something that is hung, something modularized and obedient to the power of the suspended grid.

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The image above illustrates that material inversion, a moment in the building where the standard ceiling tile switches to concrete, and where the hanging system is exposed, at this point the ceiling is lowered to create a compression of space, to encourage attention and to challenge our dis-relationship to the seamless ceiling within contemporary spaces of capital.

As part of my project intention to re-establish an experience of the market, my design exposes the realities of accelerated capital at certain key moments within the building. This is an obvious way to allow people to experience the harsh mechanic and cabled reality of capital. The image above illustrates a moment at the very top of the atrium space, before someone enters the pit. The underside of the pit has a clean and hidden services strategy, but as a person circulates up and past the plant level, and in head height of the pit floor, the design deliberately exposes the cabled realities of accelerated capital.

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Peak Adrenaline - ‘Compression & Overstimulation’ My design recognises the realities of high frequency trading and its machinist world, and understands that the Chicago Trade model is becoming increasingly outdated. The intoxicated environment associated with the Chicago Trading model, and its moving and dissolving crowd intensities is where the projects interest has been focused on. My response is design a space where shopping, trading and betting markets are blurred, a space of ‘capital intoxication’. This will allow a cross section of people to use the space, from a trader to a group of people before a night out, allowing the possibilities of an intoxicated crowd once more.

The pit is spread over two floors and the screens are set around a central screen, which captures an internalised focus. The design understands research ideas of compression and the importance of an internalised focus.

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Axonometric Trade, Bet & Shop Pit - The Adrenal Peak 105

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Peak Moments - Material Inversion

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Services - The Connected Office

The Pit Floor Glitz

1 - Cable Junction 2- Cabling for central pit screen on suspended system

1 - Raised Circular Design Rubber Flooring System, Brass Finish 2 - Raised Access Flooring System 3- Lightweight Steel Structure

Within contemporary spaces of capital (shops and high-street banks), the material pallet used in all of these spaces portrays an appearance seamlessness and smoothness, reflecting the technology in which each space either uses or sales. Contemporary trading offices appear sterile environments in comparison to Chicago as there connections to the market are hidden within the floor and ceiling voids. Through material application inversion, my project looks to dispel the myth of seamlessness and transparency. Firstly exposing the services within key areas of the building, and also thickening up the cabled reality of capital and its machines. To do this I exaggerate where connections bend and junctions need to be formed, to reflect the reverse of this apparent seamless condition and its reflect its stitched reality and with that bring it into comprehension through a play on materials and their accepted and trusted associations.

Following my research into Chicago and the importance of the pit to the frenetic and intoxicating environment, I wanted re-established a pit architecture as the key space of my design. With the material specification of the pit floor, I created a play on slip resistant flooring, which you would get in most commercial spaces, and the glitzy aesthetic of spaces of capital by using Raised Circular Design Rubber Flooring tiles, brass finish. Both as a practical function work but also its finish creates a visual focus towards the pit floor, one of the key aspects to the space, along with the services and the screens, forming a connected and pitted environment.

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Release of Adrenaline - ‘Excess & Fragility’ My research recognises the importance of a release to the heightened state of adrenaline. A common form of release found within trading is drinking, so in response my design incorporates at its highest level a high class and indulgent champagne bar. It is positioned at the end of the journey through the building and is deliberately situated at the end to reflect the desire for capital and excess.

Both time and market comprehension have been recurring themes throughout the project studies, my design looks to re-establish these. Positioned at the centre of the space is a fountain clock, this dramatic statement looks to re-project time and market capital back into the city, due to its position at the top of the building and scale, it allows the city to have a glimpse of this delights of this excessive space.

Due to its position and scale, this aspect of the design intends to engage at a wider city level, adding a macro layer to market experience.

Throughout all of the spaces of the building, each space has been designed to unfold onto the next, this is done through an emphasis on creating dynamic sightlines and connections, and this careful and choreographed sequencing of space reflects my research on Chicago. The buildings unfolding design which allows people to see on to the next stage of capital experience, reflects the belief system in capital and how it encourages and structures that belief. The bar area, has been deliberately set inside, forcing the back of house bar area to the edge of the space, this design decision reflects my belief that its more important to be seen within these places, and the radial nature of the space is an obvious help to that, forcing people to view each other.

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Axonometric Champagne Bar - The Adrenal Release 109

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Release Moments - Materializing a Belief System through a Floor

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The Dominance of a Radial Grid

Fragility of Capital

1 - Primary Steel Structure 2- Glass Dome & Solar Shading Strategy

1 - Poured Terrazzo Floor Finish 2 - Slip Resistant Floor Panels (Back of House Bar) 3- Lightweight Steel Frame (Secondary Structure)

My structural and material design strategy for my intervention within the existing looks to insert a lightweight steel structure, and use cladding and rail systems to hang material veneers and panels. This gridded panelized approach is epitomised within this space of release. The structure and material panels are set on a radial axis, from the centre point. This grid is set out across multiple component systems, flooring, balustrading, and bar counter surfacing. It also sets up a bar furniture layout, each stool post sells past the floor finish (between each floor panel) to connect down to the structure below, this detail moment gives a clue to the fragility of the space, the fragility of capital.

This detail moment, illustrates the radial totality of the floor build up across the space, the raised floor finish sits upon a lightweight radial steel structure, allowing for a service zone. At this spatial point, I wanted to materialize the fragility of the belief system in capital, so I have played on flooring finishes and their associations, the terrazzo floor is designed to be engineered to its thinness point across its longest span, to be visually delicate, to feel almost too thin, on the cusp of collapse.

This feeling is illustrated best at the floor edge detail between floor and fountain, where a person has a view down into the darkness of the pit.