ABSTRACT
Iconic architecture is a wish-fulfilment mechanism of stupefying digital imagery that promises the spectator omnipotence, immortality and the perfect life. It is the new agent of modernity, whose ultimate project has always been to resist death, from life extension and cryogenics, to transhumanism and Kurzweil’s singularity. Building on the framework developed thus far, the chapter introduces three dominant genres of iconic architecture—Elysium, the Loop and the Sacrifice—which each provide their own symptomatic account of modernity’s dual project to avoid metaphysical death and capitalism’s own demise, at the level of the architectural image.
