COYOTE URBANISM
BLENDER
AFTER EFFECTS
Architecture, as an institution whose very existence depends upon appealing to concentrations of wealth and power, has always been complicit in the service of structural inequality. Issues such as ownership, rent extraction, access, labor, ... are left outside the accepted definition of architecture, rendering architects incapable of enacting material change. Rather, this architectural “dark matter” functions as the predominant undercurrent that silently shapes and defines our built environment, serving capital above all. The result is a commodified urban landscape that alienates all who inhabit it.
Our thesis project is a short, animated film that serves as a speculation and anthropological critique of the neo-liberalization of the city; in other words, the commodification of architecture, and in turn urbanism. We explore this concept through the urbanism of Los Angeles as a city formless in nature, instead tied together through individual experience and identity. By giving shape to the forces of capital that define the city, we formalize the formless, revealing the city as a perpetual process of extraction and commodification.
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