Architect Alejandro Zaero-Polo of Foreign Offi ce Architects comments that his generation emerged in a social and political context of “cheapness.”1 His generation of pragmatist architects is accused of abandoning any social or political program. He suggests that in the previous generation political discussions in society were about equality-of gender, race or class, for example-and the heroes were fi gures such as Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. By contrast in his time, heroes of cheapness have brought cheap clothes, cheap travel, cheap software, cheap food and cheap structures to the market.