CAPITAL CLASSICISM
Utopia Building for Exclusive Enclaves

As of 2018, the 42 richest individuals collectively hold as much wealth as half of the entire world’s population, a total value of R21.5 trillion. 42 people own the same as 3.7 billion people, the poorer half of the world’s population. (Elliott 2018). In this project, these shocking stats of wealth disparity are put to work in the design of a city modeled to exclusively serve the 42 richest fat cats. The project builds a critique of this absurd reality by making evident the structural relationships and systems that perpetuate the ever-growing global economic
paradigm of wealth disparity.

In this city, capitalist methods of production, consumption, recreation and transportation
become spatial structuring systems that begin to orchestrate ways of living for the different economic brackets. The 42 fat cats exploitation of (and reliance on) labour to create and maintain wealth is fundamental to the organisational structure of the city, demonstrating a dependence on production and consumption in maintaining economic ‘order’.

Satirical narratives are employed in this speculative landscape in order to portray the
relationships in a heightened capitalist society: between wealth and labour, the production and the product, the elite few and the social many. The project is realised at moments within these relationships through marketing brochures, websites, protest pamphlets and the architectural resolution of a number of thresholds in the building. The project is represented through three distinct architectural languages: axonometric, perspective and working drawings: Axonometric assembly drawings show the overall connection between different
economic structures; Perspective views shows the quality of space based on the individuals experience in them; and Satirical working drawings critique the intent behind the creation of these spaces.