ABSTRACT
The managerialist turn in architecture concerns making things work and pay within the scope of existing arrangements and suggests its proximity to the post-political. Subsuming architecture to urbanism's organizational imperatives, OMA's hyperbuilding architecture aligns itself with an essentially governmental and managerial practice that first emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Indicative of OMA's turn from the avant-garde strategies of Bigness to the managerial agendas of the hyperbuilding, China Central Television (CCTV) stands at the intersection of a post-political architecture and a managerial governmentality. In Delirious New York, business is figured as an alibi for the 'emotional and intellectual adventure' of the city. In post-reform China, political communism is Koolhaa's alibi for the 'communism of capital'. Koolhaa's has not been the only architect to have forged a passage from the neo-avant-garde to the territory upon which architecture now makes common cause with managerial governmentality.
