ESALA 2017
The Big Roof
Giorgio Ponzo Sophia Banou
In his book In the World Interior of Capital the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk describes how Western civilization managed, over the course of a process that lasted about 500 years, to build up a global system of transportation, communication and exchange that ended up enclosing the whole planet into one gigantic “psychotechnical” construction: the Global Interior. The process of Globalization – implemented through a series of material and immaterial constructions defined by Sloterdijk as “canopies of globalization” – determined, on the one hand, the ethos of Modernity (devoted to exploration, research, and innovation) and, on the other hand, revealed the essential character of modern space as an interior. The Big Roof studio worked on these two specific aspects of Modernity: the production of ever larger interiors, and the production of knowledge through research and innovation.
Master of Architecture
If, at a global level, one might argue (as Sloterdijk does) that the process of interiorization is finished, locally one can find points of resistance that escape the global interior. These places offer the opportunity to re-start history, proposing the foundation and development of alternative interiors. Here, the confrontation between the “outside” and the “interior” seems sharper and able to challenge the logics of social and economic expansion that characterised modernity.