Unbuilding Manifesto - Building 21 Project

Unbuilding manifesto and design proposal

sponsored by Building 21 written and designed by Adam Ghadi-Delgado

Contents

Manifesto

Proposal of Unbuilding

4

Preconceptions

6

Zeitgeist, Life and Death of a Building

8

Program & Non-Tabula Rasa

On Space & Form

18

Continuously-Changing City Landscape

20

Phenomenological Value of Artificial Ruins

24

Artists’ Ideologies

Guerilla Architecture

28

Addressing Adaptive Reuse

32

Laissez-Faire

Moments

36

New Buildings

38

Political Hurdles

40

Role of the Architect, Further Thoughts & Current Practices

42

Project Proposal

12

26

34

44

3

STEP 1: Let inhabitants abandon the structure to be unbuilt STEP 2: Dismantle, surgically destroy, or rearrange the building’s material STEP 3: Allow individuals to repopulate the space and use it the way they wish, engage in the flexibility and eventfulness of the unbuilding space STEP 4: Repeat STEP 2 & STEP 3 until there is no possibility of event in the space.

STEP 5: Recycle remaining building material into new architecture

Proposal of Unbuilding

After the building has become abandoned, because of the lot acquisition by another party, because it is to be demolished to favor a new project, or any other reason, there is an opportunity before demolition to create a cultural agent in an active cultural landscape. To do this, the building must be, as implied, in an active cultural landscape, and the building must be deemed structurally safe.

The project proposed is to dismantle, surgically destroy and rearrange the materials of the building to create a novel architectural experience of space for its potential experiential and cultural value. This space is prescribed as public domain, similar to how a park would function, until the building’s inevitable destruction.

Unbuilding is the digestion of material until it is unusable, reworking and recycling on site, replacing outright demolition. Avoid being prude with buildings, knowing that they will be demolished makes them malleable.

This creates potential for the built environment to allow individuals to experience spaces that are otherwise unsustainable.

Destruction, dismantling and removal of material in a space is a creative tool for spatial manipulation. Make the demolishing of a building a process, a performance, a tectonic experience.

Unbuilding is by definition, a true-to-form deconstruction of architecture in the built environment.

Cambridge Dictionary’s definition:

Deconstruction noun [C or U] - /ˌdiː.kənˈstrʌkʃ.ən/ “the act of breaking something down into its separate parts in order to understand its meaning, especially when this is different from how it was previously understood”

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House IV Drawings / Eisenman Image bibliography number: 8

Unlike Peter Eisenman’s theoretical applications of deconstruction, where his buildings are ideologically deconstructed, drawn as process, and then constructed as a proof of process, unbuilding is a material form of deconstruction.

Preconceptions The process of deconstruction in itself is of interest because of the process that involves disassembly to disect and understand. It is a disection of the building, to reinvigorate the material quality and other fluxes of the buiding, particularly program.

It is to remove words from a sentence until it is no longer grammatically correct, unbuilding is to question what differentiates a building to a sculpture. It is so challenge what can be done inside a space, and the difference between outdoors and indoors. Gaston Bachelard, in Poetics of Space, tried to define the difference of indoor to outdoor with the experience of a Canadian or Russian winter and the wall separating the warmth of the hearth to the cold seen in the window. It is this contrast that makes the experience of an “indoor” self-evident. Unbuilding supposes that it is when the space is no longer usable for events that could not happen outdoors. In other words, it is the experiential death of a building.

Applicably, unbuilding it is closer to Levi-Stauss’ bricolage in terms of process, because it is to reimagine compositions of an already existing pool of material. Unbuilding is to play within these limitations, to acknowledge that the tool-box is limited and “bricoler” these artefacts together once more.

FR: Le bricoleur est apte à exécuter un grand nombre de tâches diversifiées ; mais, à la différence de l’ingénieur, il ne subordonne pas chacune d’elles à l’obtention de matières premières et d’outils, conçus et procurés à la mesure de son projet : son univers instrumental est clos, et la règle de son jeu est de toujours s’arranger avec les « moyens du bord », c’est-à-dire un ensemble à chaque instant fini d’outils et de matériaux, hétéroclites au surplus, parce que la composition de l’ensemble n’est pas en rapport avec le projet du moment, ni d’ailleurs avec aucun projet particulier, mais est le résultat contingent de toutes les occasions qui se sont présentées de renouveler ou d’enrichir le stock, ou de l’entretenir avec les résidus de constructions et de destructions antérieures.

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Horse Emergy Analysis / Rydberg Image bibliography number: 33

2-4-6-8 House - Parts / Morphosis Image bibliography number: 21

Zeitgeist, Life and Death of a Building

Buildings are meant to transcend generations, to build and to do it correctly for generations to come. Ruskin’s mentality of trying to build forever echoes this sentiment. To be an architect is to, therefore, be partially clairevoyant. To destroy a building is to disagree that the building can be re-adapted for a novel use, its materials have become unusable, or the owner of the lot has chosen that they do not want to use the material accumulated on the site.

I wish to define buildings as an accumulation of materials and labour.

This allows for the application of emergy material theory from H.T. Odum and Marxist labour value theory to understand the value of a building outside its cultural or practical importance. In fact, one of the defining qualities of civilization is the way groups of people are able to use labour to rearrange the material world to habilitate living.

The culture of building is one of reorganizing material onto a site which implies ghost acreage, where to compensate for a building, a specific amount of land is required to make a physical product using labour. To think of a building as a product and to think of its raw material equivalent as if a list of extracted ressources is undoubtedly the most revealing aspect in realizing the importance of preserving buildings and their materials.

Western 20th century into early 21st century culture has no inherent value system for raw materials or the natural energy that they require to be produced, and therefore, there is no capitalist incentive for material sustainability. The value of material is determined by labour and material scarcity not by the energetic value of a material object. Therefore, there must be a different incentive to the extension of material life in old buildings.

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Pulsation of Building Material (kg) Over Time / Moe Image bibliography number: 24

Performance Mapping / Tschumi Image bibliography number: 39

Performance Building / Tschumi Image bibliography number: 39

Zeitgeist, Life and Death of a Building

In Empire, State & Building, Kiel Moe outlines that the Empire State Building has been in its current iconic position for a long time, and this is due to its cultural affluence.

The concept of velocity is also outlined where a building’s materials, therefore the building itself, have a velocity. The velocity of a building can be used as an indicator of its sustainability, for the raw materials are often displaced to a company or factory that will make a product out of the raw material and turn it into a building material, which is then imported on site to produce a building.

These movements have an inevitable impact on the environment. The velocity of the building then, once it is built, continuously decreases.

Once it is on site it starts aging, a building develops different relationships to its surroundings: the city.

Buildings develop histories and cultural significance, collective memory accumulates to give additional ideological value to the building. Over their life cycles, buildings effectively perform.

Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas would say it because of the programmatic performance of a building being the way we define our spaces. Tschumi even pushes it to be “material”. The idea of ‘program’ is the way we discern buildings in our culture. Latour further thinks of a “moving project” a material performance where buildings age, move, contrasting the thought that buildings are generally seen as immutable and unmovable objects. Buildings continuously perform throughout their material cycle and programmatic use.

We are prude with buildings in maintaining their state and this is for mainly two reasons: either its organization is helpful to the way it functions (or poses no hindrance) and there is therefore no need to edit it, or careful renovation can become expensive because it often requires analysis, labour and a positive influx of material. What is proposed here instead is no influx, possibly even outflux of material from the site as to change the spatial quality of the spaces in the building.

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Yokohama Master Plan Diagram / Rem Koolhaas Image bibliography number: 16

ropes and rules - Advertisements for Architecture / Tschumi Image bibliography number: 40

Program & Non-Tabula Rasa

A building’s ideological identity comes from its program. The reason it is urgent to think of buildings as a spatial rearrangement of material using labour is because, instead of that, we generally think of buildings as their program: a library, a school, a house, a shop. Instead, in a space that is losing its identity because it is abandoned, architectural cues are helpful to understand its prior identity. These cues are enablers of architectural programs: chair arrangement, magazines and a secretary make a waiting room while two bedrooms with closets, a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, etc. make an apartment.

Architecture as a structural, material, formal object is devoid of program; program is prescribed and gives life to a building. Architecture functions on either simple or complex hierarchies relating different spaces. Instead of having a building being torn down, it is possible to edit its identity and rearrange spatial hierarchies to create unexpected experiences otherwise improbable in conventional architecture. This is especially true in relationships between exterior and interior spaces.

When a building becomes programmatically obsolete because of its cultural or political (or other) context, and the architecture is of a specific quality, it may be an interesting case for an adaptive reuse project or an unbuilding project if it is to be demolished.

Because of historical reasons and technological reasons it is sometimes impossible to readapt buildings. For example, architects designing prior to the technological advancements of the 20th century did not plan server rooms, which must be kept in hermetic conditions at specific temperatures. Buildings, over time, become obsolete much like a technological object would because it is sometimes impossible to retrofit, forcing an adaptive reuse project, additions, or renovations. This forces demolition.

Program specificity makes it difficult for a space to be versatile enough for adaptive reuse. For example, hospitals are highly specific buildings because they are idealized as efficient machines with multi-part programs interacting continuously. These are programmatically fragile ecosystems that are not adequate to place in a space of unbuilding.

Despite this, the inverse is true, it is possible to make an unbuilding project out of a previously-active hospital.

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Maison Dom-ino / Le Corbusier Image bibliography number: 14

Diagram about Le Corbusier’s Work / Eisenman Image bibliography number: 7

F. P. Program Diagram / Price Image bibliography number: 30

Fun Palace Brochure / Price Image bibliography number: 31

Program & Non-Tabula Rasa

After Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture and the Domino House, the infill-type concrete skeleton building permeated world-wide as a prototype that takes the form of a three-dimensional grid. The grid is structural and acts as a guide for architectural manipulations of the space.

The grid is effectively a rigid skeleton where pseudo-malleable walls are arranged. Because of the importance of this idea, we have a series of buildings structured this way which can be endlessly rearranged by floor. Most skyscrapers are structured in this way. Further, in unbuilding terms, these can express intra-level relationships by surgically removing parts of the floor to create atriums while floors present a blank canvas for event and material manipulation.

There is a distinctive point in the material breaking-down of a space where the possibility of program restricts itself and usability becomes impossible. Much like a syntactically correct sentence, there is a certain expectation for the space to operate. In the destruction of a space, there is a point of no-return where the material qualities of a space now impede more restrictive programs from happening. The inverse tends to happen as well, when spaces are too versatile, nothing happens in them. Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, for example, is effectively a Tabula Rasa of program, rendering a sort of utopia vision of a blank space as if it were a cultural enabler.

The argument is that once a building has been digested enough to lose its usability, then it is not a building anymore. That is the edge-condition of unbuilding, or when the sentence becomes solecistic. Once it has reached that point, it is programmatically, and therefore culturally, dead.

This opposes the zeitgeist where when a building is abandoned, it is immediately dead.

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Program Diagram - Sensitivity / Self

Program & Non-Tabula Rasa

In the case of unbuilding, the incentive is to explore the programmatic breakdown of the usability of a space through the removal and rearrangement of material. It is to use the parameters and rules (or ropes and rules, so to speak) of the space, extrapolate programmatic use, and offer the framework to the city to see what can happen in such a space: a weathered, intentionally decaying building.

Poetically, a building is alive for as long as it is used. As a building is set to be destroyed, there is a moment between its abandonment and its demolition where the building can be considered dead. During this time is when unbuilding should take place.

During unbuilding, the space implies a set of programs: ephemeral programs and indeterminacy projects. These are projects involving short time-scales and using spaces to experiential ends. As easy-to-grasp example, these can be pop-up boutiques, bars, performances, galleries, parties, reception halls, cafes and more. They are programs that benefit from unconventional spaces because they aim to be experiential more than purely practical, and they require very little spatial arrangements or furniture to function and it is often flexible and mobile. Their furniture is their spatial enabler, and allows the space to become entirely experiential. The flexibility implied in the space creates an avenue for program unlike conventional spaces.

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House / Whiteread Image bibliography number: 42

Très Grande Bibliothèque Proposal / Koolhaas Image bibliography number: 17

On Space & Form

The space we occupy is never as intuitive as assumed. Poetry in this sense is always closer to the essence of a space than a rigid plan is.

Rachel Whiteread’s House is revelatory of this phenomenon by solidifying a theoretically occupied space. It materializes the continuous fluidity of the home itself and gives it form. The connections of a building formally, its non-material tensions influenced by material, are in continuous flux. The influence of the architecture onto these fluxes is the interest of unbuilding and how these have an active dependency to the material dismantling of a building.

To do so is to first acknowledge the specific formal-cultural associations in geographical contexts. This is to say that strong classical buildings are often associated with government or powerful associations in the western zeitgeist, for example. More challenging architectural forms like OMA’s Très Grand Bibliothèque proposal start to put into question intra-building relationships. By adopting similar approaches to unbuilding, creative programmatic frictions start to occur via material voids.

If material influences a building’s form, and form creates programmatic flux and tension within the building based on its context, then a particular attention must be made to both the formal manipulations to the building and its relationship to the site and context.

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Property-lot value extrapolation / Steif Image bibliography number: 34

Pruitt Igoe Demolition / Yamasaki Image bibliography number: 11

Continuously-Changing City Landscape

Demolition of buildings in small lots aiming to engage a different project is closely related to gentrification. Gentrification points to an active community in both its financial and cultural affluence. While it is difficult to stop without strong-handed policy, unbuilding is the type of project that is able to breathe cultural continuation into buildings destined to the graveyard.

In its current prescribed state, unbuilding is a project that relieves gentrification’s tension socioculturally, and has to be geographically specific while also topically sensitive.

Gentrification is experienced in varied tectonic ways across the globe, but has clear commonalities that should be understood: Happens commonly in historically rich or “legacy” cities; Happens as a result of new proximity to sought-after amenities and types of amenities; Causes increases in real-estate value, meaning an overall increase in household income over time; Changes cultural priorities of a neighbourhood over time; Using spatial lag, historical value of plots of land by sale price, neighbourhood proximities, and extrapolating, Ken Steif of Urban Spatial analytics explains in much more depth the ways plots of land change over time and how spatial dynamics in a city operate in his research project “Predicting gentrification using longitudinal census data.” The project represents a predictive model for gentrification in legacy cities in the United States. By reviewing the data, and changes in real-estate development in cities, with implications of demolition and construction of buildings, this type of study points to the continuous existence of buildings near the end of their material lives.

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North view of what would become Places des Arts / Archives de la Ville de Montreal Image bibliography number: 2

Visualisation of Vacant Buildings in Montreal / Le SĂŠisme Image bibliography number: 34

Continuously-Changing City Landscape

I will shortly refer to effects of gentrification in Montreal specifically because as an individual, it is the metropolitan city I understand best. This sentiment continues in later segments, where Montreal is used as the host for pertinent examples. The Quartier des Spectacles is one of the most dramatic changes in value of real-estate in Montreal’s history after the age of prohibition where North American businessmen would stop in Montreal for its bars and cabarets. The change came as the mayor Jean Drapeau took it upon himself to modernize the city of Montreal.

Between the 1950’s and the construction of the Desjardins complexe in 1976, the city had invested into Expo 67, the Olympic games of 1976, a metro system, an underground megastructure and other massively-scaled projects. After the city had effectively received a face-lift, the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal uses the unused land around Place des Arts to build ephemeral stages. Over time, the notorious Quartier des Spectacles would become notorious for its summer-time activity, cultural phenomena and slew of services and amenities. Naturally, real estate prices shot up, real estate development continued. This produces a tense neighbourhood where old buildings and cultural icons like the Montreal Pool room still stand in proximity to new giants and glass boxes. Most of the neighbourhood’s buildings have been demolished and set aside to allow new buildings, now more culturally in-line with the city’s vision.

This same phenomenon happened in the city’s Mile-End where, historically a poor working class borough is now host to small local boutiques, renowned restaurants, and does not represent a working class demographic anymore, has had many adaptive reuse projects appear, and over time will most-likely see dramatic real-estate development. Cultural agents such as White Wall Studio and Casa del Popolo are currently active in that neighbourhood (Year 2020).

Entremise, a Montreal-based NGO, aims to reuse vacant spaces around the city. Their promising prototype project, Project Young, reinhabits an abandoned space for twenty-two months as a work space until the building must be returned to the city of Montreal. Their active model is one of transition spaces which is familiar to the concept of unbuilding and is one that points to how cities change continuously.

The generalization is that gentrification comes from industrial success, cultural importance due to emerging artists, events, and/or architecture, and the rising value of properties. It is easy here to think of New York city as a fervent example of gentrification. This indicates that it is all the more important to implement a system of unbuilding as neighbourhoods and boroughs experience changes in character. Gentrification is a continuous process in the western canon of land ownership in cities, and therefore, unbuilding will remain relevant until western ideals radically change, even in economic recessions. Socio-cultural event does not halt.

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Le antichita Romane, Tomo II, Tav. LX / Piranesi Image bibliography number: 29

Phenomenological Value of Artificial Ruins

Unbuilding, represents a strong phenomenological argument for the individual in the city for its subversion of preconceptions about architecture and functions of architecture. Similar to almost any readaptation architecture project, there is an unexpected experience because of a remodelling of what was there before, especially if the prior was experienced. Spatial reasoning, that is influenced by collective memory of places, is affected by this subversion because an individual expects characteristics of space and spatial cues, while an experience of discovery quickly replaces this expectation. These are moments otherwise inexperienced that are now possible because of the changing of physical attributes of a space.

Further, in unbuilding specifically, this subversion happens differently than in other projects because of the appearance of material flux as a process. For example, cutting a hole on the floor and using that material to make a bench next to it, a beam in the ceiling removed to make a railing makes for a procedural material mapping of the space and its manipulations. Unbuilding spaces are places of potential and imagination, they are effectively a material playground involving only the necessary influx of labour. This process makes for an experience of space that changes over time until the building is unusable. This kind of process of space is rarely experienced outside the architectural imagination, or drawing which is how deconstructivist architecture is recognized, but I highlight this: ideas of deconstruction making novel architecture is not ideologically the same as deconstructing an existing building. This prototype of a programmatically active deconstruction of a building is phenomenologically captivating.

Unbuilding’s poetry is using a space unexpectedly, to go against the grain of the space, what it was prescribed to do. It is witnessing the remnants of the space, and accepting the ambiguity of the space. Unintended is the best way to describe this phenomena, it is an uncanny psychological and sometimes physiological serendipitous experience that challenges one’s established senses of perception, it is akin to the sublime.

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Conical Intersect Gelatin Silver Print Collage / Matta-Clark Image bibliography number: 19

One to make at Home ... / Margiela Image bibliography number: 20

Artists’ Ideologies Gordon Matta-Clark contradicts the built environment zeitgeist and portrays ideas already addressed in this document by using power tools to destroy specific parts of buildings. His manipulations are material, therefore spatial in nature. Specifically Four Corners, Splitting, Conical Intersect, his photo and material montages of architectural elements all provide a visceral realization of the malleability and fragility of architecture. With his power tools, Matta-Clark is able to dismantle a space almost entirely with formal intervention, the space breaks down and there is a different spatial hierarchy that now permeates the building. This is a play-ground for events, despite no proof of it. His work displays a thriftiness and rearranging that is somewhat akin to Martin Margiela’s.

Albeit with garments, Margiela pioneers ideas of reuse and of deconstruction. His ethos of deconstruction and reconstruction is transferable to architecture, and most evident perhaps in works like his sock sweater, or his belt jackets, leather sandal vest, and so on. It is, by definition, a non-commercial aesthetic because it is highly specific to the materials that are found to be recycled.

These ideas are, as the architecture itself, performative, they are of process. The act of making is part of the art itself, and as performative art itself is, it is ephemeral. They evoke ideas of manipulation of material over time and are the basis for unbuilding. Documenting the process to offer the documentation as a product instead of the object itself points to the value of the process itself over the finished product. When the object itself obviously delineates process, it is all the more interesting, like seeing a a hammer next to a hole made in the drywall.

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AraĂąa / Recetas Urbanas Image bibliography number: 5

Photo of Men Playing Cards Outdoors / Lara-Hernandez Image bibliography number: 18

Szimpla Kert Image bibliography number: 18

Guerilla Architecture

Defined as form of counter culture to the built environement by minimal interventions, often in old disused buildings, in goals of readapting guerilla architecture is, by definition, the closest active concept to unbuilding. By definition it is a subversive endeavour Where they differ is in hierarchy where unbuilding englobes the guerilla architecture ethos because of the expected continuity of material and recycling. The expectancy is for unbuilding to address the material wastage in demolishing buildings in productive ways and change perception of buildings the way they are currently understood in the western canon.

The most significant catalyst for guerilla architecture, one that is not necessary to it but makes individuals realize the necessity of, is political turmoil. These types of tensions create further architectural questions; a brutal example of that is questions of ownership in the Palestine-Israel conflict where, as Eyal Weizman put it, “[The borders in question] may even errupt into Palestinian living rooms, bursting through the house walls.� That very tension is the type of force that enables guerilla and subversive architecture. Further, in the chapter titled Urban Warfare: Walking through Walls, Weizman explains vividly how these forces were materialized (or de-materialized) by the Israelian military, which involved a different thinking of the urban fabric in deconstructed ways which is not far from the formal argument for Unbuilding.

Non-exhaustively: In Spain, political tensions, economic challenges and restlessness makes cheap but meaningful architectural interventions the most contextually sensitive and pertinent. Santiago Cirugeda of Recetas Urbanas reclaims material and builds in illegal spaces, without warrant, for a perceived need in the community.

In Mexico, it is common practice to appropriate the public sphere by using little means and minimal furniture, similar to street merchants but to different ends, this social friction happens because of housing shortages in Mexico city. This is outlined and explained in J. Antonio Lara-Hernandez’s Temporary Appropriation of Public Space As an Emergence Assemblage for the Future Urban Landscape: The Case of Mexico City.

This phenomenon extends itself to abandoned spaces around the city.

In Budapest, Ruin Bars are an important part of the night life and are constructed from a complex of several buildings that have been manipulated and redecorated frantically. Bathtubs repurposed as seating, bar counters in living rooms, and a plethora of unexpected frictions of architectural assumptions.

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Centro Financiero Confinanzas (Torre David) / Alias: EneasMx Image bibliography number: 10

B018 / Bernard Khoury Image bibliography number: 15 The Egg / Karam Image bibliography number: 35

Berghain / Reuse Mostly by Studio Karhard Image bibliography number: 6

Guerilla Architecture Non-exhaustively (cont.): In Venezuela, the economic disparity between individuals forces some to live in the equivalent of slums while others in gated communities.

This makes the appropriation of abandoned spaces necessary. For example, Torre de David, as it is commonly called, or Centro Financiero Confinanzas is a 45-storey tower in the middle of Caracas which was abandoned mid-construction and reappropriated by families that now work and live in the building. For a long time, the building had no running water or electricity which points to the resilience of people in need of shelter.

In Lebanon, the civil war forced a displacement of the population.

Physical spaces now are being reappropriated for different projects. An example of that is Bernard Khoury’s B018 nightclub project in the zone of “Quarantaine.” It is a politically and culturally subversive project that reappropriates politically tense spaces in a poetic way. There are also ruin-like buildings representing cultural icons in the city-scape such as Beirut’s Egg, previously one of the city’s cinema theaters (1960s), that are completely abandoned and rest as a shell. These spaces are often visited and used for momentary event, and have been effectively reclaimed as public space.

In Berlin after the wall fell, the new-found spaces without any political validity were soon overrun “illegally” by notorious nightclubs, artist groups and others. The ones that have survived are set in Stalinist industrial architecture such as Berghain and Tresor. While more in the realm of adaptive reuse, the Koenig Galerie was a brutalist church in Berlin turned into an art galerie. Despite projects like this, there exist more ephemeral events in Berlin that appropriate spaces in a more aggressive way, making site-specific art, or performances that are lacklusterly documented. These types of projects often lack documentation for their illegal and ephemeral nature.

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SSENSE 418 St-Sulpice / Chipperfield Image bibliography number: 36

Fonderie Darling / In Situ Image bibliography number: 12

Centre Phi Prior to Adaptive Reuse / Centre Phi (L’Oeuf) Image bibliography number: 4

Addressing Adaptive Reuse

In Montreal, adaptive reuse is partially ingrained in the culture, SSENSE (David Chipperfield), Centre Phi (L’Oeuf), Darling Foundry (In Situ) are splendid recent examples of that. Darling Foundry, in fact, is closer to a “Laissez faire� than a full renovation (refer to subsequent title). Quebec culturally prides itself in its history, which is physically manifested by the preservation of the historical buildings in the province. This makes adaptive reuse in Montreal and the rest of the province a wide-spread ideology and there are splendid examples of it. Despite this, unbuilding is not an adaptive reuse proposal, it is a proposal of surgical destruction of buildings but it is important to acknowledge the difference between them.

As a concept, adaptive reuse, more often than not, completely renovates a building from the inside out. As an image, these buildings are effectively matryoshka dolls, seeing the preserved facade followed by an interior building. The similarity also comes from having a similar hierarchy because of exterior constraints, buildings systems and other essential architectural elements, making warehouses often the most interesting to manipulate for their facilitating shell-like architecture.

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The Meeting / PS1, intervention by Turrell Image bibliography number: 26 The Hole / PS1, intervention by Saret Image bibliography number: 25

Palais de Tokyo / Images by 11h45, architecture by Lacaton & Vassal Image bibliography number: 1

Laissez-Faire Within the realm of reuse, there are two projects that I would like to explain more in-depth for their appeal to this manifesto.

MoMA PS1, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A is a museum-type project where MoMA reappropriated the first public school built in Brooklyn and artists are now invited to manipulate the space in a significant way. The artistic manipulations are meaningful spatially and often involve an outflux of material. The most material alternative manipulations include Alan Saret’s The Hole at P.S.1, Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple and James Turrell’s The Meeting.

MoMA’s PS1 also teaches about site specificity because the art is meant to be exclusively displayed in the space. All art pieces in PS1, therefore, change the nature of the space. It is, in spirit, an unbuilding project kept alive by its novel function as a museum.

Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France by Lacaton & Vassal is effectively a space reappropriation project. In spirit, Lacaton & Vassal take the space as it is, clean the cobwebs and dust, and call the space perfect.

In a way, this simple efficient reappropriation of this old pavilion is in the spirit of unbuilding, all while being one of the strongest contemporary cultural agents in Paris. It is in a method of reappropriation that I describe as “laissez-faire.” Which is one of the cornerstones of unbuilding.

The only element missing would be a material reevaluation and surgical removal.

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Silo City, Buffalo / McGinnis Image bibliography number: 22

2019 Edition / Village au Pied du Courant Image bibliography number: 3

Moments

Ephemeral structures and interventions are at the spiritual threshold to Unbuilding. This is because ephemeral structures are in constant flux of material, usually programmatic enablers or experiential interventions. For this, a blank-canvas-like space is used to these ends whether outdoor or indoor. Indoor spaces can inform a performance and a great example of that is Silo City in Buffalo New York, where decommissioned grain silos are reused as venues for art and performance. Musicians and other performers are quick to take advantage of the eight second reverb the space offers and often invade the space with their instruments, tools, and other space enablers.

Ephemeral structures often involve quick inputs of labour before and after the moment for which the ephemeral architecture is active, using lightweight materials, For this there are a slew of examples in Montreal for the outdoors: First, there are the terraces set up every year in front of restaurants and bars, usually constructed out of wood and put up within a day.

Second, the stages set for the Francos, Jazz Fest., Juste pour Rire and others around the quartier des spectacles.

Third, Village au Pied du Courant where every year, crowd-sourced design selected through competition enables a space near the shore for inhabitants to attend a DJ set as much as have a calm day with their kids depending on the time of day.

Fourth, Le Virage campus MIL is a UniversitĂŠ de MontrĂŠal initiated space for ephemeral projects and structures currently featuring container-type architecture.

Etc. These structures imply movement of material, labour and users in conjunction, which is interesting to graft as a framework to unbuilding as an argument for feasibility.

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Hy-Fi / The Living (at PS1) Image bibliography number: 27

The Growing Pavilion / Krown Image bibliography number: 23

Three Material Stories / Wikstrom Image bibliography number: 41

New Buildings

New constructions must be over-designed in ways where material can be digested into different objects after the fact. Architecture in the 21st century designs with products more than material itself, distancing the material from the architect is a crucial flaw in the building process.

Material is taken for granted, which is part of the problem in the construction zeitgeist stated at first. Material is seen as replaceable, which is particularly the case for building materials because they are exploited for their material properties and ready availability, making waste management a crucial aspect of new buildings.

All new buildings, as do existing buildings are subject to influx and outflux of material, as it is part of their performance. It is the part of the architect’s responsibility to predict what kind of influx and outflux a building requires, including building systems. If an architect assumed responsibility over the building over its lifetime and had to maintain it themselves, the state of the building industry would largely right itself.

Hypothetically, it is possible to create new buildings using specific methods so that the material influx of the building happens in a natural way. Although incredibly long as a process,for example, salt pools can theoretically be used to coat material endlessly because of natural phenomena, and building with salt presents a potential material alternative. There are also discoveries of new materials such as mushroom based bio-material that may prove itself viable for responsible new construction. These are to say: architects of the 21st century need special attention to the material they consume and how they will perform, age and so on.

The current building industry’s norms for green building are also non-extensive and cannot be taken as the end-all to sustainability. LEED and other accreditations work on a point-system which is goal-oriented and not process-oriented. “Green buildings” come in different forms, and in Singapore for example, it means continuous investment into social housing, control over the ecosystems (man-built and natural), and lush flora. While a tremendous example of a complete overhaul of a city at the building-scale, it is not the only option for green buildings.

In fact, instead of trying to use as little energy as possible, Kiel Moe hypothesises that is more beneficial to use more energy in building, but use it in effective, cyclical ways that feedback into the building’s and the city’s ecosystem. Not every form of sustainability involves energy and carbon per capita calculations.

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A tapestry of stone and brick... / Alison Creba Image bibliography number: 32

Political Hurdles

A project such as unbuilding presents several political hurdles. First and foremost there is the respect of building code which varies by government over time. These involve design requirements, preservation, safety regulations, etc. It is possible to rearrange material in a respectful way, but the inability to use certain spaces will also involve what is deemed safe or not in an unbuilding space.

As explained previously, guerrilla architecture arises primordially through or after political tensions, self-building without permits and invading abandoned buildings is effectively an open act of rebellion and subversion. Spaces being illegal creates a slew of other problems such as fines, gang involvement, unrespected safety regulations, etc. Paperwork is often too long to consider doing an ephemeral project such as unbuilding unless there was regulation allowing for it.

One of the largest issues with this type of project is the conventional hierarchy of actors where the client has power of veto, the architect is a creator and executioner, contractors dictate what can and cannot be done and users are to take it or leave it. In this sense, smaller projects require smaller channels and hit fewer bumps in the road, but since ownership can mean the vetoing of a project, the owner of the lot needs to have incentive.

Demolition involves soil, surface water, ground water, air quality, and pollution (includes noise and light) surveys. Since unbuilding is demolition over time, because it is procedural, it is important to actively survey over the period. Construction waste is usually brought to a process facility to be recycled or discarded or brought to a landfill. In this case, since the project is being dismantled piece by piece, there is a gradual opportunity to recycle certain materials.

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Detroit Reassembly Plant / T+E+A+M Image bibliography number: 28

Trash Peaks / DESIGN EARTH Image bibliography number: 9

Interior view of Garfield Park Powerhouse / Sampson Image bibliography number: 13

Role of the Architect, Further Thoughts & Current Practices

The architect is in a precarious situation when in the city, because his role is one of approaching tabula plena. The architect should actively consider possibilities of adaptive reuse or material recycling where possible. Disposing of the previous building, constructing a new building and maintaining said new building should all be part of the responsibility of the architect. In addition, the architect has a social responsibility to design for the community concerned and those who will be using the building. While platitudes, these guidelines are all too often ignored.

Theoretical work is also as important if not more than physical spaces. Conjecture and proposals involving an advancement of the field is necessary. Two splendid examples in the spirit of unbuilding are Detroit Reassembly Plant by T+E+A+M and Trash Peaks by DESIGN EARTH. Historical accounts of material cycles in building are also productive, as material is digested from building to building in the city environment.

The city is simply an additional ecosystem. Somewhere in between: material flows in Brussels by Alison Creba is an exemplary account.

In active practices, Adam Corneil and his company called unbuilders is a Vancouver-based company is taking the initiative by offering a service of dismantling existing wood-frame buildings and salvaging the wood.

Theaster Gates initiated the Chicago Arts and Industry Commons where abandoned spaces are reused in effective societal ways. This is not the only practice of its kind. Where Unbuilding comes in is in proposing such sites as habitats for event, and witnessing the programmatic breakdown in a material space.

With the evolution of non-physical spaces, virtual options are ways to free up and diversify physical approaches to space. The real benefit to physical involvement is the phenomena associated. Virtual reality as well as software involves new forms of interaction and possibility. The future of physical stores, for example, is through experiential benefit rather than the product they provide.

Once I am dead in the dirt, my designs and opinions on future societies disappear with me, my designs will not have temporal agency unless they are reused in significant unexpected ways.

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STEP 1: Let inhabitants abandon the structure to be unbuilt STEP 2: Dismantle, surgically destroy, or rearrange the building’s material STEP 3: Allow individuals to repopulate the space and use it the way they wish, engage in the flexibility and eventfulness of the unbuilding space STEP 4: Repeat STEP 2 & STEP 3 until there is no possibility of event in the space.

STEP 5: Recycle remaining building material into new architecture

Proposal of Unbuilding

Boulevard Ville-Marie Downtown & Financial District Champ de Mars Old Port Place des Arts

Zones of Urban Friction for the Site

Chinatown

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Initial State + Recent History

Upper floors believed to be office spaces and/or storage

Bottom floor of the entire complex formerly Steve’s Music Store Currently a Parking Lot with reviews pointing to a problem with theft

South West View

Intersection of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Urbain

Site proximity to the Palais des Congrès, Old Port and Chinatown creates a tension on the site

Loading dock in the back most likely supplied the block

North East View

The common elements of architecture engage and enable a space. Through these, events can take place. They are the objects that are going to eventually disable the space as they are one by one removed from the building.

Homeless people gather in this area consistently

Material Components of Building

Phase 1: Artefacts

Phase 2: Walls and Doors

Phase 2: Windows

A space becomes specific through objects, the role of a space is established by its artefacts, otherwise architecture is defined by hierarchies.

Unbuilding aims to emphasise these hierarchies via removal of these objects and the stripping of programmatic cues in the space.

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Proposed Material Flux and Time Scale

Initial Perspective-Section

Initial Ground Floor

Random Access Material Area (RAM) (Where salvaged material is stored for short amounts of time)

Parking Lot is now dedicated to the space, for its labour and for its visitors.

Firewalls present unique spatial opportunities if pierced Floors can be pierced to have continuous spaces

Undress

PHASE 1 Clean-Up Remove all remaining furniture from the space (salvage what possible)

Initial Combined Third Floor

Remove all non-structural and nonstair securing partition walls, being careful to salvage all wooden elements, also remove any systems from the walls unless vital.

PHASE 2 Program-Material Friction Start significant spatial manipulations via the removal of important materials such as mezzanines, parts of floors, firewalls.

Walking Through Walls

Initial Combined Second Floor

Doors & 2x4’s

Remove all Finishings, mouldings, dangerously damaged surfaces (salvage what possible)

Do so with power tools but also being careful to salvage the material for further use, remove windows as needed.

Use RAM material to reinforce or secure as needed.

Use RAM materials to build event structures as needed for indeterminate program re-enabling, these programs are to be organized by communities requiring a space such as the one presented PHASE 3 Total Breakdown Treat the remaining structure as open space, the space is now broken, it is no longer different than the outdoors, salvage remaining material and introduce new architecture

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Phase 2 - Proposed Manipulations and Events

RAM (Random Access Material) Event Hall Terrace and Rooftop Dancing Club

Admin. Office + Storage

Night Club Party w/ Inflatables

Car Enthusiast Meet-Up

Speakeasy w/ Inflatables above Night Club

Phase 2 events start to looks like a freeform community center, where rooms and the exterior are unexpectedly connected. Scheduled events swarm the space. This is the most active point of unbuilding.

Events include: art studios, rooftop dancing club, performering cafe, ephemeral library, club, speakeasy, pop-up boutique, semi-interior garden administration and Halloween showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show Projection Atrium, Library, Performance Cafe Yoga, Art Studios, Gallery, Boutique, Info. Center

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WEEK IN LATE PHASE 2

Phase 3 and Calendars

2 0 2 1 UNBUILDING C A L E N D A R

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Notes and Acknowledgements

First and foremost, this work and research has only been made possible through the generous help and varied framework of Building 21 at McGill University, and I must thank them for their challenging discussions and interesting approaches.

Second, I must acknowledge the history of the term “Unbuilding” as it was popularized by David Macaulay’s fictional account for the dismantling of the Empire State Building. Imagining this in conjunction to Kiel Moe’s material history of the same site makes it all the more fascinating.

In addition, Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses by Brad Guy and Robert H. Falk has also coined the term in their self-explanatory book.

Third, and finally, I will take the time to thank my mother’s patience.

Works Referenced and Further Reading: Bachelard, Gaston, et al. The Poetics of Space. Penguin Books, 2014.

Eisenman, Peter David. The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Lars Müller Publ, 2006.

Foster, John Bellamy & Holleman, Hannah (2014) The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic, Journal of Peasant Studies, 41:2, 199-233, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.889687 Foucault, Michel. “Des Espaces Autres.” Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité , Oct. 1984.

Guy, G. Bradley, et al. “Material Circulation, Energy Hierarchy, and Building Construction .” Construction Ecology: Nature as the Basis for Green Buildings, Routledge, Taylor Francis Group, 2015, pp. 37–71.

Jackson, John Brinckerhoff., and John Brinckerhoff. Jackson. The Necessity for Ruins. University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.

Jackson, Steven J. “Rethinking Repair.” Media Technologies, 2014, pp. 221–240., doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262525374.003.0011.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. The MIT Press, 2004.

Latour, Bruno, and Albena Yaneva. “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move’: an ANT’s View of Architecture.”

Birkhäuser, 2008, pp. 80–89.

Lévi-Strauss Claude. La pensée Sauvage. Plon, 1995.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Colin Smith. Phenomenology of Perception. Franklin Classics, 2018.

Moe, Kiel. Empire, State & Building. Actar, 2017.

Moe, Kiel. Convergence: an Architectural Agenda for Energy. Routledge, 2013.

Roberts, Bryony. Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation. Lars Müller Publishers, 2016.

Ross, Susan. “Somewhere in between: Material Flows in Brussels.” WASTE HERITAGE RESEARCH: Deconstruction, Salvage & Re-Use, 31 May 2020, wasteheritageresearch.wordpress.com/2018/11/22/somewhere-in-between/.

Steif, Ken. “Predicting Gentrification Using Longitudinal Census Data.” Urban Spatial, https://urbanspatialanalysis.com/portfolio/predicting-gentrification-using-longitudinal-census-data/.

Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color. Rizzoli, 2012.

Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. Verso, 2017.

Wigley, Mark. Cutting Matta-Clark: the Anarchitecture Investigation. Lars Müller Publishers, 2018.

Wigley, Mark. “Network Fever.” Grey Room , no. 04, 2001, pp. 82–122.

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24. Moe, Kiel. Empire, State & Building. Actar, 2017.

25. MoMA. “Installation photograph of Alan Saret’s “The Hole at P.S.1, Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple” (1976), originally installed in the P.S. 1 exhibition, “Rooms”, and picture here on view during the P.S. 1 exhibition, “Out of Site” (December 16, 1990 - June 6, 1991)” c. 1990. MoMA PS1 Archives, II.A.763. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

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35. Springer, Daniel. “The Value of a War-Scarred Ruin in Beirut.” Failed Architecture, 9 Dec. 2013, failedarchitecture.com/thevalue-of-a-war-scarred-ruin-in-beirut/.

36. SSENSE. “SSENSE Night Exterior.” FRAME Web, 2018, https://frameweb.com/article/fashion-retailer-ssense-designswith-data-to-go-from-digital-to-physical.

37. Steif, Ken. “Predicting Gentrification Using Longitudinal Census Data.” Urban Spatial, https://urbanspatialanalysis.com/ portfolio/predicting-gentrification-using-longitudinal-census-data/.

38. Szimpla Kert. “THE AMAZING SZIMPLA KERT, BUDAPEST.” Indie Voyager, 2 Sept. 2019, www.indievoyager.com/2016/09/ alternative-budapest-szimpla-kert.html.

39. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color. Rizzoli, 2012.

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