ABSTRACT
Calatrava’s style presents a pure kind of iconicity, a fusion of neo-capitalism and hypertechnology. The roof structures for his Olympic Stadium and Velodrome are parabolic surfaces made to look like wireframe computer models on the ground, their ghostly suspension cables unseeable and unreal, i.e., digital; while the Olympic Agora is a terrifying colonnade of white skeletons that flicker in the light like a stroboscope along the northern edge of the Olympic site. This chapter describes the Athens Olympic development as an image of the new money world, of ones and zeroes extending out to infinity, a spectacular architectural representation of the derivatives that brought the financial world to its knees.
