Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation

New York’s high-end architecture is produced from distant materials, bodies and knowledge. These are extracted from their local ecosystems to become resources; commodities circulating in a contemporary economy based on global accumulation.
In New York, the stainless steel façade of Hudson Yards is made possible through the massive mobilisation of the chromite extracted from the earth of the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe. Its shine is produced by the abrasive capacity of the ilmenite from Xholobeni’s ground in South Africa. The act of building above the railways, the single operation that provided the ground on which this part of New York now stands, would have been impossible without the cobalt extracted from the Nyungu mines of Zambia.
Extraction is segregation. Material extraction is one way architecture participates in the making of segregation. It is this concern that is addressed in an immersive sound installation in The Laboratory of the Future.

Authorial collaborators
Nohnle Mbthuma Forslund, Siyabonga Ndovela, Margie Pretorius, Sinegugu Zukulu, ACC (Amadiba Crisis Comittee), SWC (Sustaining the Wild Coast), Steve Hoffe
Team
José Luis Espejo (Sound Research and Direction), Farah Alkhoury (Research and Field Recordings), Roberto González (Coordination and Design), Vivian Rotie y Pablo Sáiz del Río (Fabrication), Jorge Cañón (AV Consultant), Ignacio Farpón (Lighting Consultant), Wojciech Gajek and Michal Malinowsky (Seismic Recordings), Walter Ancarrow (Text Editing), Joseph Hazan (Studio Recordings)
With the additional support of
Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)