Architecture mustn't try to compete with the attention economy, but belong to it. So far, I have written about developing techniques to utilize time better in architectural renderings in addition to my own project of finding different ways of issuing architectural criticism. In such a temporally stressful lived experience, attention is a currency. In order to discuss topics like architecture — or bring architectural issues to an audience — a crafty attitude is required. My research method is to search for strange ways of getting attention and find patterns which can help architects belong rather than compete.

Extra Extra won’t focus on memes but try to illustrate problems through them. To that end, the looser conditions of a column allow for visible cracks in my positions. Unanswered questions are welcomed. Criticisms formed on a mimetic hunch can be built up. Nothing here is too polished, neither is it expected to be.

As architecture culture breaks into architecture cultures, let's explore the fissures. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a constituency.

ObviousPlant began in 2015 with artist Jeff Wysaski placing fake toys in stores all over Los Angeles. Wysaski begins by gathering toys from second hand stores. These off-brand and often cheaply made toys are then repurposed and repackaged as new under the guise of some jarring and strange idea or product. It is then placed and left in stores as if it were available for purchase. The new toys create an estranging rift in the daily grind of big box store shopping. Often funny and uplifting, the toys allow others a chance to question the world around them.

Is this product real? Is everything else I am buying any more real? Is there an architectural equivalent to this strategy?

Recently ObviousPlant held its first show in Los Angeles called the Museum of Toys. The toys themselves were on display as a fake museum, putting it right in stride with a recent tendency to create a museum as a full sensory experience. While I haven’t been able to visit the exhibition personally, displaying the fake toys together provides a different experience than their intended use in the wild as a random object on a shelf in a sanitized context. However, a quick look at the inventory will show the toys are worthy of our interest as objects themselves outside of their performance in a store.

For Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, buildings perform as either a duck or a decorated shed. In both cases this means buildings are a lot like products on a shelf. They signal what they are and what they do by either imitating the form of the product itself or advertising it directly. To draw you in and vie for your attention they must hide in plain sight. To estrange the building like it is a fake toy one must play with linguistic and aesthetic presumptions given contextually — as if the city street is an aisle in a grocery store.

The Sainsbury Wing extension of the National Gallery of London does this magically well. Would anyone notice the columns marching around the corner in such language? When they do notice, do they participate and feel rewarded? Do they question the rest of the city around them in a new way? It surprises and delights in much the same way an artwork could shake you out of the banality of, say, shopping for a new tube of toothpaste.

Consider also the New York City highrise tower designed by Mark Foster Gage Architects. This project had no client or funding source. In fact, it was entirely speculative. Yet it made headlines when it was proposed in 2015 because of the seriousness which was taken in its dissemination as what I can only assume was a fake press release. Once it was picked up by enough outlets the project was treated as if it was any other real proposed high rise. Seen along side of those proposals, this speculation flows in and out of reality in a way that allows the questioning of that reality. Is this building real? Are all the other proposals real?

In making fake products or making fake buildings, these authors showcase what it may mean to make architecture that belongs to an attention economy. In doing so, architecture can properly participate in the cultural arenas it assumes.