Crystal Island is to be the biggest building in the world. It is a building as microenvironment—a very, very big tent enclosing an enclave of apartments, offices, stores, a hotel, a museum, a theater, a school, and even “public space.” Its square footage is roughly equal to that of four Pentagons. It is also very tall, with an observation deck that rises 450 meters into the air. In section drawings, curling arrows indicate air convection currents and exchanges through the tent’s chimney and breathable ETFE membrane (Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a recyclable lightweight plastic film with better light transmission than glass that has recently been used for large roof expanses).
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Renderings of most of these recent utopias feature buildings breaking through the clouds, catching a glint of sun or seeming to emit crystalline rays of vitalist energy in a misty old futurological setting. The renderings of Crystal Island, which is sited on a spit of land jutting into the Moscow River, indulge to the fullest in this aesthetic regime, signaling sophisticated technological muscle with the plain transparency of a gospel tract. In a parallel reading, we might ask whether we have grown accustomed to architecture that appears to condescendingly pander to global operators of emerging markets. Russia is in a special position here—not a non-aligned country talking back to (super)power but a transformed superpower that occasionally even trades on its crass new bling. Are the renderings, then, also indications that kitschy shiny tents, tacky crystals, and leftover heroic scripts of modernism are fine to serve up to these customers? Or do these primitive images have something more complicated to say about the fictions and obfuscations necessary to power? The portrayals have “New Oldness,” or “Old Newness”—expressions that the activist collective Retort has used to characterize the mixtures of the sophisticated and the crude in contemporary politics. The public will get the simple fairy tale, old-school style. Any more information about the way the world really works will be released on a “need to know” basis.