The Architect Who Couldn’t Sing, by NEP essayist J.D. ALT has been awarded an eLIT gold award for 2012. The book, which is also available in paperback, makes the case for directing sovereign spending toward a specific kind of infrastructure Alt calls an “Enabling Structure”. Almost exactly a year ago, he introduced the concept of “Enabling Structures” in his first NEP essay Playing Monopolis Monopoly. In that essay, they were playfully represented as a second level to the Monopoly game board, but they are, in fact, an actual architectural concept Alt has been pursuing for many years.
He discovered and became intrigued with MMT after coming to the realization that “Enabling Structures” could be most effectively implemented as a form of sovereign spending. Making the case that sovereign governments actually can issue and spend the currency necessary to build these structures, then, has become a key component of his architectural argument—an argument he is continuing to develop in a book in-progress: Housing for the Masses—Dwellings for the Soul.
Pingback: 2012 National eBOOK Award for Architecture goes to NEP blogger | Fifth Estate