The Ingot

Architect(s): 
Jack Self

Office

Fulcrum / Real Foundation

Real Estates - The Ingot from Jack Self on Vimeo.

The Ingot is a 350m (1150ft) gold-plated tower sited next to London Bridge, and designed to house low-paid, precarious workers.

It is the product of a complex financial algorithm that manipulates conditions of debt (space, time, money) to provide ultra-durable, high-quality and inexpensive housing. It is funded by a 50-year bond mechanism, which suggests that if the influx of global capital into London property cannot be stopped it might be redirected in such a manner as to flip the supply-demand shortage. Subsequent trading of these bonds in a secondary market permits the division of the financial form of the building from its social function, and serves as the first example of what might be called "Derivative Architecture."

The Ingot explores the contemporary crisis of representative democracy, highlights the declining value of the nation-state and attempts to use the fiscal tools of neoliberalism in order to weaken this profoundly immoral wealth redistribution imperative.

Jack Self