Just-So Stories in Real Estate History, or, How the Apartment Tower Got Its Glass Skin
<div class="page" title="Page 2"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> <p>Real estate history often centers on not just facts and figures but also personalities and professional networks filled with self-made characters that seem to come from fables. But what happens when real estate history’s narrative threads are pulled loose from the warp and weft of the mythologies of the cultivated professional personality? By exploring how the technical operations of financial markets function in an environment colored by personalities and social practices, we can see architecture from a perspective that accounts for the fictions of finance. This article will use three narratives about real estate developers to explain how these stories are operative, both as makers of meaning and as obfuscators of other forms of agency, in shaping our reading of the past.</p> </div> </div> </div>
Authors: Sara Stevens
Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative