Future Lost in Smog

There was a slightly better photo of this in the paper the other day, with someone huddled, covering their face in front of the stadium - but this one will have to do. Regardless, here is evidence that, although futuristic utopias are decidedly off the agenda, the future does seem to have arrived somewhere, albeit in decidedly unnerving form. Actually, this view of the new Beijing stadium in a cloud of pollution seems to have a similar effect to Decon in Decay: the CGI image suddenly placed in a real space, and looking distinctly befuddled by it. But while the rotting Hadid building tells the old Ozymandias tale, this is a weirder story - the detritus and waste products of industrialisation engulfing their built glorification. (via, and on the subject of latticework futuristic constructions, go see Kosmograd on the posthumous history of Tatlin's tower as mix-and-match architectural precursor and point of comparison)