Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin by Matthew Soules

“Not only are superprime condominium towers scarcely inhabited in a literal sense, but this absence extends to ownership itself. The superprime condo tower thus generates multiple paradoxes of being present while being absent. It is owned but empty, a trophy that is held anonymously. Intermediaries fulfill an almost shamanic role of facilitating exit—a multidirectional exit that allows for a wholly new financial capitalist dynamism based in architecture and urbanism, what might be called avatar architecture. In this condition the superrich can jump in and out of architectures they never fully inhabit. The shell companies and intermediaries of superprime real estate are a form of postpolitics. After all, ‘politics’ means ‘affairs of the cities,’ and it is in architectural and urban spaces that postpolitics finds one of its most potent forms.”

-Matthew Soules, 2021