The politics of fractal geometry in Russian paper architecture: the intelligent market and the cube of infinity

Fractal geometry has been used repeatedly in architectural design throughout the last 20 years—either because it is not Euclidean or because it has some capacity to simulate nature. While these properties explain the majority of projects that borrow from complexity science, a small number of designs also utilise fractal geometry for political purposes. This paper examines the political dimension of fractal geometry in two projects from the Russian Paper Architecture movement. Through this analysis the paper supports Robin Evans' contention that misunderstandings of the mathematical properties of geometry can lead to the production of architecture that is conceptually unstable.