"Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over"
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Materialism, in Erickson's hands, isn’t just the love of stuff; it’s a governance model. The ominousness comes from his pivot word: management. Not money, not consumer desire, but an administrative class that treats everything - land, cities, even culture - as a controllable asset. As an architect, Erickson watched this shift up close: decisions about public space increasingly routed through risk assessments, procurement rules, branding decks, and “efficiency” metrics that sound neutral while quietly dictating what can be built, funded, or imagined.
The line carries a designer’s anxiety about who gets to author the world. “Management takes over” implies a takeover from politics, from civic deliberation, from artistry, from the messy pluralism of urban life. It’s the triumph of the spreadsheet over the street. Erickson is also diagnosing a North American mood: late-20th-century corporatization, the rise of developer-driven cities, and public institutions adopting private-sector logic. Materialism becomes ominous not because people buy more, but because managerial thinking expands into domains where its language doesn’t fit - beauty, dignity, public memory, ecological restraint.
There’s an oblique warning here about taste and power. Management doesn’t argue; it optimizes. It doesn’t persuade; it benchmarks. That’s why it’s hard to fight: it presents itself as common sense. Erickson’s subtext is bluntly political for a profession often framed as aesthetic. If management is the author, architecture becomes a product line, and the city becomes a portfolio - sleek, profitable, and spiritually thin.
The line carries a designer’s anxiety about who gets to author the world. “Management takes over” implies a takeover from politics, from civic deliberation, from artistry, from the messy pluralism of urban life. It’s the triumph of the spreadsheet over the street. Erickson is also diagnosing a North American mood: late-20th-century corporatization, the rise of developer-driven cities, and public institutions adopting private-sector logic. Materialism becomes ominous not because people buy more, but because managerial thinking expands into domains where its language doesn’t fit - beauty, dignity, public memory, ecological restraint.
There’s an oblique warning here about taste and power. Management doesn’t argue; it optimizes. It doesn’t persuade; it benchmarks. That’s why it’s hard to fight: it presents itself as common sense. Erickson’s subtext is bluntly political for a profession often framed as aesthetic. If management is the author, architecture becomes a product line, and the city becomes a portfolio - sleek, profitable, and spiritually thin.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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