Not only are large parts of its surface occupied by architectural mutations (Central park, the Skyscraper, utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the UN Building_ and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall), but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies, aborted projects and popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the New York that exists.
Especially between 1890 and 1940 a new culture (the Machine Age?) selected Manhattan as laboratory: a mythical island where the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle and its attendant architecture could be pursued as a collective experiment in which the entire city became a factory of man-made experience, where the real and the natural ceased to exist.
Rem Koolhaas, "Delirous New York", 1994.
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