Banach spaces with small spaces of operators (Q1359503)

For a certain class of algebras \({\mathcal A}\) we give a method for constructing Banach spaces \(X\) such that every operator on \(X\) is close to an operator in \({\mathcal A}\). This is used to produce spaces with a small amount of structure. We present several applications. Amongst them are constructions of a new prime Banach space, a space isomorphic to its subspaces of codimension two but not to its hyperplanes and a space isomorphic to its cube but not to its square.