Masters Thesis: Royal College of Art
ADS6 Tutors: Clara Kraft Isono, Satoshi Isono & Guan Lee
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Addressing the denial of failure in the City of London’s financial district by focussing on disruptions to a false trajectory of pure growth: the construction, destruction, booms and busts of the Square Mile.
In a series of installations, interventions and photographs of physical models, the City of London's financial district adopts the design language of construction - safety, urgency and hazard - to articulate the volatile nature of its operations. The design language is applied at different scales including the city uniform, the street scape, office interiors and furniture. The tableaus speculate on a possible future within our neoliberal economic cycle where the financial district is more vulnerable and receptive to its own risky business.
High Vis Pinstripe Detail
/
High Frequency Austerity
Acrylic Light Box Print
Boom
&
Bust
Flash Boys
Acrylic Lightbox Prints
Status Quo
Wanderlust
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A disorienting forest of pinstripes, curtain walls and high-tech finishes defines a utility set to defend the premise of competition. In the status quo of city offices verticality speaks of an impossibility of constant growth, banks that are too big to fail, re-enabled and perpetuated by tax payer bail-outs. It is the supporting and distanced relationship that the government has with finance capitalism that enables this power and reach.
Rogue Elements
Cataloguing the City
Digital Photographs
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The model photographs below depict moments leading up to an inevitable crash within the cyclical timeline of finance capitalism. They portray an environment that speaks of the high risk, overheated and under-slept reality of the City - a world that ordinarily presents itself as infallible and anonymous within a landscape of darks suits and curtain walls.
Rogue elements come to the fore. A curtain wall inflates the seams of seamlessness through enhanced silicone joints; scorched intumescent paint outperforms column encasements and conference rooms surpass trader floors into the ductwork for lack of space. Competition here is still rife but running on adrenaline. In the furore of the insatiable market, despite alarms of failure it is business as usual.
Active Management
Adaptive Expectations
Antitrust
Appreciation
Assymetric Shock
Backwardation
Bankrupt
Barter
Bear
Bear Market
Blue Chip
Bonds
Boom and Bust
Bootstrapping
Bottom up analysis
Break-even point
Bubble
Bull
Bull Market
Business Angel
Business Confidence
Business Cycle
Buyers Market
Cannibalise
Capital
Cautious Fund
Collateral
Commodities
Common Goods
Compound interest
Conditionality
Convertible Bonds
Coupon
Closing
Cyclicals
Creative Destruction
Credit Creation
Credit Crunch
Crash
Defensive Stocks
Deflation
Depression
Diversification
Dow Jones
Drip Price
Early Retirement
Emergency Fund
Encumbered
Escalation
Excess
Facility
Fixed Interest
Floatation
Floating rate
Free Trade
Fringe Benefits
Hot Money
Hyper Inflation
Income drawdown
Inequality
Inflation
Insolvent
Intangible Assets
Invisible Hand
Invisible Trade
Junk bond
Gearing
Gilt
Growth
Hedge Funds
Leverage
Liberalisation
Liquidity
Marginal
Market Failure
Market Forces
Market Power
Maturity Date
Medium Term
Merger
Misery Index
Mobility
Modelling
Moneterism
Money Illusion
Money Markets
Money Supply
Monopoly
Monopsony
Moral Hazard
Net Assets
New Growth Theory
Null Hypothesis
Nominal Value
Oligopoly
Open Economy
Opportunity Costs
Overheads
Overheating
Overshooting
Over the Counter
Petty Cash
Private Equity
Random Walk
Rate of Return
Rationality
Real Returns
Recession
Regular Bonus
Surrender Value
Switching
Systemic Risk
Taper Relief
Tick
Tied Adviser
Toxic Tranches
Trade Area
Transfer Pricing
Transmission Mechanism
Transparency
Treasury
Trough
Trust
Turnover
Unregulated
Uncertainty
Unemployment
Utility
Usury
Value
Value Added
Value at Risk
Venture Capital
Vertical Equity
Velocity of Circulation
Volatility
Wealth Effect
Weightless Economy
Winner-takes-all
Working Capital
Yield
Yield Curve
Yield Gap
Zero Coupon Bonds
Zero-Sum Game
Intumescent Columns
Acrylic lightbox print of 1:25 physical model
Silicone Seal Curtain Wall
Acrylic lightbox print of 1:25 physical model
Financial Services Conference Room
Acrylic lightbox print of 1:25 physical model
High Frequency
Austerity
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The rogue elements operate in a City that is susceptible to the smallest of vicissitudes, or milliseconds. As Donald Mackenzie outlines, the race to maintain a leading position within the global market now concerns the speed of trading which has reached ultra-fast possibilities due to HFT. As yet this high frequency transmittance does not operate across the distance of the Atlantic and Europe still relies on fibre optics for trading relations with America. Due to the fact that the UK receives fibre-optics faster than Frankfurt from the USA, London still has the advantage of a thousandth of a second.
The project speculates on a possible future where this technological barrier has been overcome. With the same speed of growth experienced in the financial big bang of 1986, high frequency trading has brought about an accelerated reduction in trading. London is no longer a leading financial centre but an underdog in the global economy. Drawing upon the types of work conditions created by cuts amid austerity in other sectors of society, the City now conducts business without the same insurance from the government. A cheaper and under-experienced workforce working longer hours are among some of the measures of austerity carried out within the CIty. A high frequency austerity sees a reduced, cheaper and under-experienced workforce that works at hours more suitable to the leading foreign markets.
Systemic Risk. London 3:42am
Photographic Print
Working Capital at dawn
Collaged Photographic print
Service Chair
Galvanised steel cable tray and plasticised tool grip
