Void Capital: The City of Perpetual Modernity

The City of Perpetual Modernity

Abstract

Void Capital provides a template, an open source architectural blueprint for urban densification. The city naturally demolishes and preserves its built forms, to achieve a dense dynamic city. However, in the name of ‘history’, or ‘quality’, this natural re-actualisation process is discontinued. Void Capital reintroduces the historic centre of the European metropolis as City of Perpetual Modernity. Its tools are typologies of the city’s periphery, combined to create ever-new architectural arrangements. Implemented in Paris, the project renegotiates the typologies of the Grand Ensemble (the Housing District) and the Quartier d’Affaires (the Business District), both once positive icons of modernity, now fallen into despair.