So Different, So Appealing: Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi

So Different, So Appealing examines the aesthetics, rhetorics, and rituals of the real estate industry, unpacking the strategies through which it conjures up its many seductions, aspirations, and desires. The included works use humor, parody, appropriation, and mimesis, uncovering the perverse logic of marketing speak by highlighting its banality or pushing it to the point of absurdity. Neoliberal real estate is, by definition, transnational, and works in So Different, So Appealing also track its offshore networks. As tools for attracting foreign investment, high end real estate developments frequently market themselves abroad, projecting their aspirational projections across and beyond borders. And migrant workers remit these emergent aesthetics and aspirations alongside their hard-earned wages, displacing the hegemony of older local architectural styles back home.