On / Diller / Wood Inflection 04: Permanence

Journal of the Melbourne School of Design
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-88778-913-8
Verlag: AADR – Art Architecture Design Research
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 4, 144 Seiten

Reihe: Inflection

Permanence as an architectural concept is no longer restricted to the Vitruvian virtue of firmitas. To think about it in this sense today produces a schism: absolutism in a world of relativism.

Inflection Volume 4 extrapolates the permanent and the temporary not as opposing forces, but as a spectrum to be navigated at each stage of architecture’s unfolding narrative. Through each of the responses presented in this year’s edition, Permanence provides a critical voice as architecture and design continually seek an enduring foothold in an inherently evolving landscape, physical or otherwise.

Contributors include Elizabeth Diller, Dan Hill, Casey Mack, Christof Mayer of raumlabor, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien.

Zielgruppe

Architekten, Designer, Innenarchitekten, Hochschullehrer, Studenten, Doktoranden

Autoren/Hrsg.

On, Dominic

Diller, Elizabeth

Wood, Jessica

Hill, Dan

Tory-Henderson, Nina

Mack, Casey

Yuen, Stephen

Mayer, Christof

Williams, Tod

Tsien, Billie

Leseproben

BREAKING AND
MAKING
TEMPORALITY TIME AND TEMPORARY
ARCHITECTURE IN
POST-QUAKE CHRISTCHURCH Barnaby Bennett What makes one thing permanent and another temporary? Can objects, buildings, or landscapes be understood through other forms of temporal status? And how might these different forms affect our experience of the objects? This essay seeks to answer these questions by complicating the normally tidy division between the permanent and the temporary by articulating an ecological understanding of time that encompasses a broader range of temporal conditions. The difference between temporary and permanent things appears self-evident: the former exists for a discrete and measurable amount of time, whilst the latter extends into the future. This is one of the binary divisions we use to understand the status of objects in the world, and we build relationships with things based on these assumptions. This essay is based on information gathered whilst living in Christchurch between 2012 and 2015. Assumptions of permanence and temporariness were particularly evident when dealing with the built environment after the earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. At 12:51 p.m. on 22 February 2011, a large earthquake shook Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city. Between September 2010 and the end of 2012, over 13,000 earthquakes jolted the city of 342,000 people, but the February 2011 quake was different. The city was devastated— buildings and infrastructure were damaged and 185 people were killed.1 A national state of emergency was declared the following day: the core of the city was shut down and cordoned off as a public exclusion zone. It would be over two years before citizens could return freely to the shattered city centre. In this context, the temporary became necessary and the permanent visions of the city a topic of controversy and debate. In his 1997 essay ‘Trains of Thought’ Bruno Latour compares the experiences of two twins.2 The first is moving slowly through the jungle. Latour says ‘She will remember it because each centimetre has been won through a complicated negotiation with other entities, branches, snakes and sticks that were proceeding in other directions and had other ends and goals.’3 A second twin is travelling on a fast TGV train from Paris to Switzerland. ‘… he will remember little else except having travelled by train instead of plane. Only the articles he read in the newspaper might be briefly recalled … No negotiation along the way, no event, hence no memory of anything worth mentioning.’4 Latour uses these examples to contrast experiences—to show the sweat, exertion and suffering of establishing a new path through the jungle against the ease and relaxation of sitting on a train. The infrastructure of the train—the tracks, signals, workers, tunnels and so on—enables the second twin to focus and develop thoughts away from the work being done to carry him. Hers is an experience of effort and his, ease. Aerial photograph of Christchurch, 2013.
Photograph by Becker Fraser Photography The experience of each twin is defined by the length of their travel and the number of entities supporting them. The twin cutting her way through the jungle has few allies—she is part of a small gathering of objects. The twin on the train has a huge array of supporters and helpers that participate in an assemblage linking large parts of Europe together. Latour uses this story to argue that a different temporality, a different type of time is being brought into being in each case. For Latour, ‘time is not a general framework but a provisional result of the connection amongst entities.’5 In this way, time is produced or performed by different types of assemblages and networks. In relation to designed things, temporality is a consequence of the labour involved with coordinating objects into certain assemblages and arrangements. It follows from this that a multiplicity of temporalities can be created by different kinds of material assemblages. The two most common types of time in architecture are temporary and permanent, but a closer look at a project like Agropolis (discussed later in this essay) offers a range of other typologies. Performing Permanence It is almost a cliché to state that one of the dominant characteristics of architecture is the quest for permanence. Architecture is meant to persist, to be durable. The term ‘permanent architecture’ does not exist because the idea of permanence is central to its logic. Various authors have pointed out problems with the assumption of permanence. Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow state the obvious but often overlooked fact that ‘No building stands forever.’6 Even the greatest buildings and cities will one day fall into ruin, become redundant or be replaced. Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow identify a contradiction in which ‘buildings persist in time. Yet they do not.’7 The language we use to describe architecture often conceals the fact that nothing, in the end, lasts forever. In this sense, permanence is an imagined ideal that we collectively sustain. Long lifespans are only achieved through the procedures of maintenance and care. Nigel Thrift writes that repair and maintenance are the ‘means by which the constant decay of the world is held off.’8 The deserted and vegetative town of Varosha on the island of Cyprus and the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea illustrate how so-called permanent objects quickly fail when no one is present to maintain them.9 The famous image of a decaying Villa Savoye evidences the tension between the essence of a finished work and the deleterious effects of time and weathering. Stewart Brand writes that ‘Architecture, we imagine, is permanent. And so our buildings thwart us.’10 The status of buildings as durable objects, like the twin’s travel on the train to Switzerland, is only sustained by an array of other devices and labour that continuously care and protect. The often overlooked labour of cleaning, repair and maintenance is the invisible work that creates the effect of permanence. Permanent buildings are a result of large assemblages of different things working together to keep them standing: foundations, windows and ceilings make buildings stable and keep the weather outside; various institutions and organisations pay cleaners, caretakers and maintenance crews to maintain and repair its different parts; financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies provide capital to upgrade, rebuild and repair as time goes by. This creates a particular experience of use, and like the twin on the train, this enables other kinds of behaviour and activity to be focused on. Permanence is a kind of performance, but it is one we benefit from participating in. The permanence of architecture is a beneficial illusion that helps to sustain the institutions and organisations we want to have as stable markers of our society—courts, houses, great landmarks, universities, commercial centres, parliaments and civic spaces. Performing Temporariness What then of the temporary? Temporary architecture is a minor tradition that requires naming in a way that permanent architecture does not. Temporary projects have a beginning and an end. Permanent architecture is finished when it opens—this is its final state. A temporary project is finished when it disappears and ceases to be. After the earthquakes in Christchurch, temporary projects proliferated with hundreds spreading across the damaged city. Agropolis was one such project initiated by Jessica Halliday, director of the Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA) and Bailey Perryman, a local food activist. It was developed as part of a larger collaboration that included local residents, businesses, chefs and artists. Launched at FESTA in 2013, the project was located on a vacant central site, one of thousands in the central city in which 80 percent of the area was demolished. Agropolis consisted of around 12 large planter boxes, many of which were constructed from demolished houses, a large four-part composting facility and a tool shed made of earth. The project worked with local cafés to gather their green waste for composting and growing vegetables to sell back to the shops. Agropolis was temporary, it evolved at its first site over two years and then moved to another in 2015 before integrating with a larger urban farm project in 2016. Authors of the 2012 book The Temporary City, Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams, define temporary projects in relation to intention.11 For them a project is temporary when the people that make and use it understand that it will not last. This kind of temporary use can be liberating: experiments and investigations can be made without the risk of permanent and expensive failure; different materials can be introduced and arranged into dynamic forms; members of the public and students can participate in the design and making of places with little fear of consequence; a larger and more radical variety of activities can be performed in public such as film screenings, bathing, dancing, shopping, eating and the growing of food. Examples of temporary projects internationally range from protests such as Occupy to community gardens and commercial pop-up spaces and are produced by a variety of designers, architects, retailers, activists, artists and community groups. Agropolis was an experiment in building systems of exchange and an alternative economy of food and waste based on freely given...