J G Ballard, Super-Cannes, chapter 29:

Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems.

Re-reading Ballard’s excellent Super-Cannes, since the way the winter afternoon sunlight suddenly caught a building a few days ago made me think sharply, momentarily, of the vast technology parks of Sophia-Antipolis. The above quote describes, essentially, architecture of control in a structural, sub-surface, context: in the sense of Robert Moses‘ low bridges, perhaps. Not just artefacts with politics, but entire environments and systems with agendas.

More on Ballard at the brilliant Ballardian.

(This is the first Friday quote for a long time. In fact there’s only been one previously; I’ll try to make it a regular feature of the blog. They won’t always be about architectures of control, but I’ll endeavour to make sure they’re always interesting.)