Alexander Holloway

After the Party

'Under the present conditions, everything conspires to obscure the basic movement that tends to restore wealth to its function, to gift-giving, to squandering without reciprocation.' ― Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share

As the recession deepens, the UK Government imposes a 21-hour working week in an effort to create jobs and tackle chronic unemployment. A still-buoyant financial sector launches a vast recruitment drive in order to maintain capacity at pre-21-hour levels, trebling its workforce. Almost overnight, this traditionally illusive profession becomes an attainable reality for the everyman. However, instead of becoming more diverse the Square Mile soon becomes a gruesome parody of its former self, re-enforcing the traditional stereotype for overabundance.

The project imagines a new leisure infrastructure that occupies a vast swathe of Roman Londinium,. The architecture is an extension of the ruins of the ancient forum – restoring the historic centre of public life for our capital. It acts as a hub of vice, sating the natural impulse for exorbitance and glut. This new class of rich and idle plays out life in a landscape of waste and excess – a place to work, live and die.