designboom | architecture & design magazine

the hacienda must be built: on spectacle and wonder in a disenchanted world

what if we are not overwhelmed by spectacle, but starved of it? our days are measured, optimized and increasingly predictable. we have never been exposed to more images, and rarely felt less enchanted by them. what feels missing is the kind of spectacle that cannot be scrolled past, with real stakes and an uncertain ending. in spectator and spectacle we look at the radical discotheques, the museum galleries staged like psychodramas, and the garments that turn the body into a walking act of rebellion. this chapter asks how wonder gets built, and how it might return some mystery to a world that has measured most of it away.