The madness of crowds: Zizzi

The “spatialisation of culture under the pressure of organised capitalism” is how the veteran critical theorist Fredric Jameson described the Westin Bonaventure hotel in downtown Los Angeles. This behemoth of a hostelry comprises a curious agglomeration of four giant squeezy bottles coated with mirrored glass grouped around a six-storey high atrium, up the sides of which shoot glass lifts. The Westin – which has a stand-still part in the epochal video-game series Grand Theft Auto – was, with...