Master Thesis "There is a wall between us" - Rethinking the mutable outline of buildings

There is a wall between us

In nature there are no limits, every element merges into one another, a tree with the ground, a rock with the earth, the sea with the beach. There seems to be a continuous space in which everything happens. This is what is called nature or outside, different from the space we live in, for the human is a creature that imposes limits between spaces, finding it natural to separate, categorize and build walls, only to then break those limits, merge these categories, and, therefore, build windows. Where does the value of unbuilding comes from? How do we perceive the world not as a fixed place, but as mutable? why is it that humans need to connect?

This thesis looks at these questions and uses that knowledge to reconnect three abandoned historical buildings in Mexico to the public space. This is done by erasing the walls that separates them, taking down the facade, carving cut through it, or opening windows. With the subtraction of any physical limits is it possible to access something with value?

Rethinking the mutable outline of buildings

Master Thesis Author: Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz Professor: Xavier Llobet Ribeiro MBArch Contemporary Projects UPC/ETSAB Barcelona, 2019

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Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz

There is a wall between us

AB ST R AC T In nature there are no limits, every element merges into another, a tree with the ground, a rock with the earth, the sea with the beach. There seems to be a continuous space where everything happens. This is what we call nature or outside, different from the space we live in, for the human is a creature that imposes limits between spaces,

finding

it

natural

to

separate,

categorize

and

build walls, only to then break those limits, merge these categories, and therefore, build windows. Where does the value of unbuilding comes from? How do we perceive the world not as a fixed place, but as mutable? Why is it that humans need to connect?

This knowledge

thesis to

looks

reconnect

at

these three

questions abandoned

and

uses

historical

buildings in Mexico to the public space. This is done by erasing the walls that separates them, taking down the facade, carving cuts through it, or opening windows. With the subtraction of any physical limits, is it possible to access something with value?

Key words: Unbuilding, Window, Borders, substraction, Erase the wall

Connection by

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Fig. 1 Matt Obrey, The Street Photographs

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CONTENTS

I N TR O D U CTI O N

THE W ILL TO CONNEC T

VALUE O F DES TR U CTION FRO M ANT I-AR T RETURN O F T H E R EA L TURNING ARCH ITECTU R E AG A INS T ITS ELF TO ANT I-ARCH ITECTU R E BREAKING IT D OW N PRO JECT I: ANA LC O R ES IDENCE

I. T HE AC T O F UN BU I L D I N G

II . CA R VE D IN S TO N E

MIRRO R O R T R A NF OR M R EA LITY MUTABL E SPAC E THE PRESENCE OF A B S ENC E PRO JECT II: CI NEM A VA R IEDA DES

II I . ERASI N G TH E WA L L

A CO NNECT ING A ND B OR DER ING CR EATU R E FRO M CAVE TO G LA S S A T REE INSIDE A H OU S E REAL IT Y IS O UTS IDE LO CAT ING US IN TIM E W E DEFINE O UR S ELVES IN OTH ER S PRO JECT III: SA N LA ZA R O C H U R C H

BI B L I O G R A PH Y

01

12

66

108

162

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Fig. 2 Anna Sundstrom, Building No. 8 Skalso Arkitekter. 2011

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I N T R O D UC TI ON TH E WI L L TO C ONNECT For the human, the borders on the body are clear. Everything that happens outside the body seem to have no relation at all with what happens inside. The skin, mouth, hair, everything that is in contact with the exterior has a different color from what is inside. If we were to drain a body of all its blood and liquids, we would see that almost every organ has a dull grey color. The heart, that is usually pictured red and vibrant, would look pale grey, like an uncooked piece of meat. Our lungs would seem like two bags of plastic, as well as our muscles. The only organs that would retain their color are the eyes, the skin, the tongue. All the organs that are constantly receiving information from outside. Without those organs, our bodies would be sealed shut. Life would not be possible. Every time we breathe, we are invading the world. It is from what is seen, and felt, and tasted, that a conception of reality is created. There is nothing inside the body that informs us of where we are, or even of the passing of time. We rely on the interpretation of our brains about what we perceive, and that what we perceive is true.

Everything that is outside the body, nature, light, society, is labeled by us as the “world”, and everything that is inside, organs, thoughts, feelings, is defined as the “self”. It is only though merging those two categories that the concept of reality is created. The human reaches out into the world and, in return, the world pierces through the self. It is natural to want to see what is outside. A space that is completely shut off from the world, like a house with no windows, goes against our self, because it would be denying its very existence. The same applies to a space that has nothing of the self. What is needed is a space that is neither inside nor outside, a blurring of the outline, of the limits of space.

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I always assumed there was a dark river flowing underneath

Fig. 3 Banksy, Love is in the bin, 2018

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PART I THE ACT OF UNBUILDING

IN TRODUCTION: The frist part o the thesis talks about the act of unbuilding. This is the idea of creating something by erasing it. The way one creates empty space by eliminating what was there before, or what is produced when value is created by destruction. That concept can be traced back to the ready-mades by Duchamp and appropiatrion. The same ideas were later expanded by the fluxus movement, the situationist and later by Gordon MattaClark.

He used this concept by turning architecture against itself, slicing buildings and carving holes in them.

It seemed that they were trying to get something more real, something that was buried or hidden.

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I never managed to accept the inherent lies in everything

Fig. 4 Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974

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PART II CARVED IN STO

NE

IN T RODUCTION: In the second part I will talk about the concept of a mutating eviornment.

The idea of taking the city and buildings not as an established set of limits, but a set of mutable connections.

I look at ideas proposed by land art, which wanted to change vast landscapes to create meaning. But where does the meaning of change co-

mes from? It seems that by carving the landscape something hidden is revealed.

There is a difference between destroying something, and unbuilding it. When we destroy, history is erased, but by taking only a piece of it, only carving a stone or cutting a building, we are giving it more value.

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I want to see inside everything, everywhere, always, forever, now

Fig. 5 Steve McQueen, deadpan, 1998

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P A RT III E RA S ING T HE WA L L INTRODUCTION: In the third and final part I will examine the reasons why we need windows when there is no practical use for them?

The window is the most vulnerable part of a building. If we need ventilation we could build hatches or vents and if we need light we could build skylights or windows h i g h above. But there is something strange about a building with no windows.

It would feel the same as i n s i d e a cave or deep underground, completely removed from the world above. Why is it then that we need windows? Is there a human need to connect to the outside, to nature and to society? Maybe the reason is that humans need to be in contact with their enviorment in order to create a sense of reality.

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PROJECT: ACTIVATE 3 ABANDONED BUILDINGS THROUGH CONNECTIONS TO PUBLIC SPACE S IN HISTORICAL QUARTERS OF MEXICO

01

ANALCO QUARTER

PUBLIC SPACES + ABANDONED BUILDINGS

HISTORICAL CENTER

PUBLIC SPACES + ABANDONED BUILDINGS

10 MAYO QUARTER

PUBLIC SPACES + ABANDONED BUILDINGS

02

03

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01/

HO USE IN A NA LCO

A NAL C O PAR K

02/

CINEMA VA R IEDA DES

A LA M E D A C E N T R AL PAR K

03/

SAN L AZA R O CH U R C H

10 M AYO GAR D E N

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“Why reject the old if one can modernize it with a few strokes of the brush?

This casts a bit of contemporaneity on your old culture.

Be up to date, and distinguished at the same time.

Painting is over.

You might as well finish it off.”

Asger Jorn, 1959

Fig. 15 . Breaking the wall, by author, based on :Substance, “Cracking the Case,” 2016.

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STRAT EG Y

B U I L D IN G

UN BUIL ID IN G

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I

THE ACT OF UNB BU U II L D I N G

Fig. 16 Michael Lewis, Things, 2018

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W h y d o w ee bb rr ee aakk tthhiinnggss??

For the most part the world seems immutable. People live according to their specific situations, all while their world, the context in which life takes place, remains always the same. Only certain people appear to have the right to modify it. We see buildings demolished, in decay, or abandoned. It is strange to think of modifying our surroundings, and when we do, it is mostly to add something to it. We buy furniture, we make objects and construct houses. We seem to accept a life of constant growth, and contribute to it, while nothing about our reality seems to be in our control. It is strange, then, to think that the first instinct we have when we lose control of our actions, when we are

beyond their capabilities to find their limits. It is a way in which they set proper distances with objects around them. They learn what is possible to bend, what is soft and malleable and what is hard, cold and immobile.Later, as we grow older we tend to stop breaking things, and instead accept them as they are.

But it seems that destruction is inevitable. There are always wars, fires, death, all caused by a human action. We are surrounded by broken things. Georges Bataille defined the world as “Little other than a field of multiple destructions� #1 It seems that the human desire can be divided in two, one desire to create, to enhance and improve, and a hidden desire

reacting on pure emotions, is to destroy.

Hitting a wall and breaking it, throwing a plate on the floor, even hurting our own body. These actions of destruction seem to be an attempt to change that set reality, to take control of it.

As we learn to adjust to life, this idea of modifying the world around us is more visible. A child, for example, is always breaking things. They tend to stress objects

to destroy, to control, to break the world around. What happens when we give way to our desire to destroy something? What meaning do we create by unbuilding? What happens when the barriers the we imposed are broken? For the human is a creature that imposes limits between spaces, finding it natural to separate, categorize and build walls, only to then break those limits, merge these categories, and, therefore, unbuild.

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“Death or unbuilding is not the opposite of life or building, #2 but a part of it.”

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Fig. 17 Ai Weiwei, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”, 1995

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The value of destruction

It is difficult to know why a work of art is filled with value. As you see the work you can feel there is something behind it, but it is impossible to point out. Is it the materiality, the color or the brushstrokes of a painting that moves you? or is it the idea, the theme of an artwork that makes you question the validity of your world view?

Take for example the work of Ai Weiwei “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn”. They are a series of three photographs which capture the destruction of a relic. In the first picture you can see him holding the vase, the shape and materiality remind you of the historical aspect of the piece. You can imagine seeing it under a cube of glass in a museum or adorning a governmental office. In the second picture, you can see Ai Weiwei’s hands in the air, and the vase almost hitting the ground.

The time to capture this picture needs to be precise, as you can feel it happens in an instant. In the third and last picture the vase is broken over the floor, only with the top part remaining almost intact.

It is one of the most famous artworks done in the last decades.

It was made in 1995, after Ai Weiwei was in prison for 81 days. But the picture didn’t come out until years later. In reality there is nothing important about it. There are hundreds of similar vases, all with the same aspect. There are also many instances in which destruction has been a part of art and history. But a picture of a fire or of a terrorist group destroying ancient ruins does not achieve the same effect. What is it then that gives this series of photographs their value?

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“It’s powerful only because someone thinks it’s powerful and invests value in #3 the object.”

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei himself does not believe that it is his most important work. So, the value does not come from the author. And because they are just pictures, the materiality is not as important as in a painting or a sculpture. But there is something liberating about looking at it, as if we were getting rid of something that has been bothering us. Maybe it is not the work but rather us, the viewer, that give its value. Ai Weiwei said about it “It’s powerful only because someone thinks it’s powerful and invests value in the object.” #3 This is the value inside the act of destruction, of unbuilding. What I want to know is where does this value comes from? For these pictures would not be artworks when art was meant only mimesis, and neither would they be artworks 2,000 years ago, when the vases were created.

There must be a change between then and now that has allowed us to give value to them. For there is nothing more than an empty space, an act of unbuilding, a vase that leaves the hand and breaks on the floor.

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Fig. 18,19,20 Marcel Duchamp, “Bottle Rack” 1914, “Bicycle Wheel ”, 1913 “In advance of a broken arm” 1915

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m A A nnttii-- A r t From

“‘Art or anti-art?’ was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake.” #4 Marcel Duchamp defined previous concepts of art as the act of creating. “the word art etymologically means to do” He argued, “art means activity of any kind, and it is our society that creates purely artificial distinctions of being an artist.” #5 But it was Duchamp who changed the way artistic value is given by not creating, but instead, giving meaning to something that already existed.

He called this type of art, of appropriation instead of creation, antiart. He first implemented the idea on a piece called “Bicycle Wheel” from 1913, a year after he gave up on painting. In the piece, he joined two found objects and placed them in a gallery. What gave value to the object was not the object itself,

that he is imagined almost as a biblical prophet, a remote figure of authority. It’s as if contemporary art history begins with him.” #6 The Dadaist movement was fueled by the destruction and randomness seen in world war I. The idea was to get rid of the past ways to create, and instead bridge the separation that existed between art and life. “It bore a range of appellation: The disappearance or dematerialization of the art object, “idea-art”, “post-object Art”, “antiobject Art”, “post-aesthetic Art”. #7 This included monochrome paintings, industrial objects, or instructions made make a poem by choosing random word combinations cut up from newspapers. It all pointed to the idea of getting rid of the authorship. They argued that the idea of art failed when it only represented a subjective view, a representation, instead of presenting something real.

but the choice of placing it in a gallery.

The art critic Jonathan Jones sees this action as the most important one. “This, it seems to me, is the question no one asks about Duchamp. His big idea - that any ordinary “readymade” object can be chosen by the artist as a work of art has sunk so deep into modern culture

The only objective art is one that does not choose, but let the audience create the value on their subjective experience.

Its randomness denies conventional notions of authorship. It was a denial of anthropocentric ideas, a way to oppose the ideas that had led to war.

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Instruction to appropiate this thesis: 1.Erase the author & bibliography 2.Take a cutter 3.Cut each page in the marked circle 4.See the world through it

Fig. 21 Linda Toigo. Medieval and Modern History, 2013

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“To appropriate something means basically only to manifest the supremacy of my will in relation to the thing and to demonstrate that the latter does not have being for itself and is not an #8 end in itself” Hagel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Duchamp believed that to reveal something true about the world, we need to appropiate it. This can be seen as the central action that later gives meaning to the act of destruction and, therefore, unbuilding. Hagel defined it as: “To appropriate something means basically only to manifest the supremacy of my will in relation to the thing and to demonstrate that the latter does not have being for itself and is not an end in itself” #8 The readymades were objects found in daily life, with a specific use representing the new industrial world, but their value and significance changed when treated as art. When Duchamp’s urinal was rejected by an exhibition, he defended the piece, saying: “Whether … his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance.

He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its usual significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object.” #9 It is his decision that modifies the object and gives it meaning. And that decision if brutal, as he takes away the object’s reason for being.

Following the human desire to destroy, he is denying the objects, a urinal, a bicycle, a shovel, of their use. It is the same action that can be seen in war or in death. But even if his actions were destructive, they were also liberating in a way. As Thoreau’s line says, “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty” #10 He took the meaning away form the object and placed it in the action. “Because the meaning of a stone does not come out of itself, it is subject to the interpretation make about it, conditioning to the possible random modifications or to human will.” #11

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Fig. 22 Marcel Ducham, “Given”, 1946 –1966

Fig. 23 Richard Wilson, “Turning the Place Over”, 2007

The emphasis of art works shifted away from the production of objects to the manipulation of the contexts

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Return of the real

It is interesting to see that Duchamp’s last work anticipates the “Return of the Real” that is so present now. In his work “Given”, he placed a landscape in a room only visible through a small peephole on the door.

That way, the spectator becomes almost a co-creator, an interpreter of the work. The small hole seems almost a voyeuristic attempt to grasp the natural landscape he created. “The work praises Given, or nature, and negates the artificial, or man-made” #12 .

It was after Duchamp that the production of art changed. It no longer concerned itself on creating but began to take the world and modify it. “The emphasis of their works shifted away from the production of objects to the manipulation of the contexts that frame the idea of art in order to expose the institutional scaffolding that props up the possibility of meaning ascribed to works of art.” #13 This can be seen later with the building cuts by Gordon Matta-Clark, or the concrete cast inside of a house of Rachel Whiteread. But before that, following the years of dada came a group called fluxus, which took the idea of appropiation, of imposition of the human will on an object, and made objects selfdestruct. They created auto-destructive art where paintings turned into flames, acid ate away the canvas, or for example, Yoko Ono, who let the audience cut pieces of her clothes until there was nothing left.

Gustav Metzger was the creator of this movement, he explains the work: “the planet is in a horrific horrendous condition, if you include all the weaponry, and then add on the pollution and the risk to natural existence…it was an attempt to grasp what is important, what is at the center of life, it’s not destroying things, its looking at the action of destruction, and part of that action is the creation of new forms” #14 They wanted to take one step closer to the human will to destroy. Later it was also done by Raushenberg by erasing a drawing so that only the white page remains. So now the object which had made art an object of desire and beauty, was lost, what remained were the actions. This is where the act of unbuilding obtained value.

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Fig. 24 Gustav Metzger, Nylon sheet dissolved in acid, 1960

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Fig. 25 Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953

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Fig. 26 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967

“The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious #16 yet most neglected of our human rights.�

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City

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T u rr n n ii n ng g a a rr cc h Tu h ii tt e e cc tt u u rr e e aa gg aa ii nn ss tt ii ttsseellff

willingly destroying something is called “liberating”, the way it would feel liberating to destroy your phone, or quit your job, or something as simple as breaking a pencil or a piece of paper.

The Situationist International (SI) thought it is the freedom to change our reality that gives us power as individuals. They offered an opposition to the modernist ideas of the time. Guy Debord belived we live in a “Society of the spectacle” where “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.” #15 And the only response was to appropiate the situation. He saw the natural desire to unbuild as a right, and every brick that was knocked down was an act of individual freedom. “The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” #16

Thoreau, Walden

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty”

An explanation of the human desire of unbuilding is that it brings empowerment and therefore liberty. One cannot be said to be free when all that you do is create. That is more closely related to confinement, to work. Even the act of

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Detournement: The intentional misuse of existing products of capital but used against itself.

Fig. 27 Situationist International. Je Participe 1968.

Fig. 28 Skalso Arkitekter. Building No. 8. 2011

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The SI saw the individual as the only one who had the right to alter the city where he lives. They opposed the oppressing forces of capitalism, which they saw in the new rigid modernist architecture.

of the city, in terms of both its spatial and temporal foundations, in order to more fully organize life according to the tenets of personal desire and drive.” #19 One of the tactics the SI used was

An example of this is the Plan Voisin made

by Le Corbusier. The SI belived it worked as the ultimate form of control. This idea of changing the set physicality of a city as a revolt against the controlling powers was influenced by the thoughts of Georges Bataille and Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed in architecture not as a commodity but as a way for society to express its desires.

Bataille argued, “Architecture is the expression of the very being of societies [...] In fact, only society’s ideal being (that which authoritatively orders and prohibits) is expressed in actual architectural construction.” #17 They saw the experience as generated by who constructs it. They used the term “situation” as what one experiences.

“For Sartre, the situation is the milieu into which an individual is born, including his as language, class, environment. Sartre’s well know dictum that, “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself,” is echoed by the Situationists in their essay, “Report on the Construction of Situations”, in which they contend, “the situation is made to be lived by its constructors.” #18 Following these ideas, they concluded that it is only the individual who could change the city. What was seen as a fixed medium, architecture now became mutable. “The tactics that (SI) proposed were predicated on undermining the fixity

the concept of detournement, which meant the intentional misuse of existing products of capital but used against itself. An example of detournement was advertising that attacked consumption. They were fighting to retain a sense of individuality against a society that wanted more, more money, more products, more consumption, and less freedom. The same idea can be used in architecture, by using architectural strategies against the pre-established construction.

Fig. 29 Gordon Matta-Clark, Available, 1975

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R ATION RE P R E S E N T TAT

Fig. 30 Diego Rivera. Sueno de Una Tarde Dominical En La Alameda Central, 1947.

Mural by Diego Rivera depicting the Alameda Park painted inside the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

What if we changed the paiting of the park into a window to the park?

Inside the Palacio de Bellas Artes, there is a mural by the artist Diego Rivera, which depicts the park that is just ouside of the building. I propose changing the mural for a window. That way it is reality that we see intead of just a representation. Diego rivera himself said, “As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw, but what they wished me to see� #20

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REALITY

Fig. 31 Carlos Alcocer. Alameda Central, 2017.

Possible view of Analco Park from a window in the Palacio de Bellas Artes

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Fig. 32 Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974

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T T o A n t i -- A r c h i t e c t u r ee

Matta-Clark’s action can be seen as the materialization of the same ideas.

He used the same tactics, but applyed them literally, using architecture against itself. “It is possible to view his dissected buildings as the ultimate detournement, one that actualized in material form the elements of psychogeography and derive.” #21 In other words, he took the ideas from Duchamp, and the SI, and used them to take control of his environment, mutating it and unbuilding it.

What Gordon Matta-Clark wanted was to unbuild the connection that made up the urban fabric. This change came about through ideas by the Situationist movement. “For both the Situationist International (SI) and Gordon Matta-Clark, the city and its architecture were the sites where capitalist modes of control acted on the individual at the most insidious level.” #22 In one of his works titled “splitting”, he took a typical suburban house, which was due for demolition, and divided it in two. He was using the same tools that built the house, a chainsaw and hammers, but used it against it, making the house impossible to use. Instead, he created something new. After he was done it was possible to see the interior of the house through the gap between the two sections. It was also possible to see exactly the material the house was made of, with the section of the walls clearly visible. In a way his cut was not just

destroying a house but showing exactly how people lived. “His cuts through buildings were an intervention, an act of careful destruction, shot through with hope.” #23 His works were usually made in buildings that were abandoned or planned for demolition. The only thing that remains are pictures. This happened because he lived in a time and a place, New York in the 70s, where the economic situation made decay a part of the environment.

Seeing abandoned buildings made him reconsider their stability. He once explained, “The thing I would really like to express is the idea of transforming the static, enclosed condition of architecture on a very mundane level into this kind of architecture which incorporates this sort of animated, tenuous relationship between void and surface… It implies a kind of kinetic, internal dynamism of some sort.” #24 .

Looking at the pictures of the house, it seems to reveal something true about the world, something that was hidden in plain sight. He was interested in combining art with his studies in architecture. His buildings were not useful but full of meaning. “The work of Gordon Matta-Clark offers a profound investigation of how philosophy is inscribed in the physical environment… and the ways in which the visible and invisible – and, crucially, the obscured – play key roles in forming hierarchies of power.” #25

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Fig. 33 Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

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Through the holes and cuts it was possible to see the overlapping conditions of the past and the present. This was visible, for example, in the last of his works, “canonical intersect” in which he cut a void into Parisian townhouses just before they were going to demolish them in order to build the Center Pompidou. It is possible to contrast the way people lived private lives with the public space. The relation between interior and exterior is broken. “The cuttings were at once a removal and an addition, creating new passageways, views and light, thereby decentering the fixed meanings that capital had imposed.” #26

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Fig. 34 CTMconstruccion. A Destroyed Building in Mexico City. 2017

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“The thing I would really like to express is the idea of transforming the static, enclosed #24 condition of architecture.�

Gordon Matta-Clark

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Fig. 35 Gordon Matta-Clark, Building Cuts, 1974

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Matta-Clark shows us there is more meaning in the relationship between the constructed world and our self. “His desire to inspire empowerment of one’s own space and architecture, rather than become a prisoner to it.” #27 Matta-Clark proposed carving a hole in the Berlin wall, 20 years before it was knocked down. It was not only an artistic action, but a social one. He believed on the power of his actions and the positive effect they could have.

In one act of unbuilding, Matta-Clark was seeking what was hidden behind walls in society, and also to gain freedom from them. “the strategy of urban renewal becomes inevitably revolutionary”. #28 It is not clear what is it about his work that makes one rethink the way in which we live. And that happens with any artwork. The only thing that is clear is that his works make us reevaluate our perspective on how the world functions. It is easy to continue to live as if nothing is happening, seeing buildings one after another without realizing it, until one of them grabs our attention, makes us slow down and ask ourselves what is life actually made of?

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Fig. 36 Michael Landy,Breakdown, 2001

“There was something exhilarating about seeing somebody liberating themselves from the tyranny of ownership” #29 James Lingwood, On Landy’s “Breakdown”

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B B rr e ea a kk ii n ng g ii tt dd oo w w nn Property and identity are deeply interwind. Now we live in a sort of duality, with a culture that not only offers you to consume more and more objects but reminds you of how much damage it does to the world.

It is impossible to live now without ownership. We fill our houses with thousands of things, some more meaningful than others. But at the same time we know that it is damaging the world. With more possessions we cause more damage, but it’s impossible to stop.

The value of unbuilding is now related to a retraction on this culture of ownership. For example, in 2001, Michael Landy created a work in which he destroyed every object that he owned, just leaving behind the clothes he was wearing. He did it by mechanically placing each of over 7,000 objects through destructive machinery. James Lingwood, who commissioned the work, said about it, “There was something exhilarating about seeing somebody liberating themselves from the tyranny of ownership”. #29 But seeing the work now, it seems to be about more than just an attack on consumerism. There is a play on the relation between objects and human. When so much of what we are comes from creating, from possessing, he seems to get rid of everything and ask an existential question, who am I? “It is a very human characteristic to possess things,” Landy says. “Having things, creating things – that’s partly what makes us human” #30 Now, other new works are dealing with the same ideas. An example is Laure Provost work, where furniture is left to deteriorate, or Shilpa Gupta who left a door opening a closing, breaking the wall behind it. These work because the opposite happens, they create a world in which only the material exists.

The urban environment is also something to consume. We can see that materialize in the gentrification of certain areas or the tourism that now invades historical centers. They seem to be made not for the habitants, but as a way to produce wealth. “The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourists, for a estheticism, avid for spectacles and the picturesque.” #31 Maybe by taking the idea of liberation from ownership and applying it to the historical context in the cities, it is possible to liberate them, to return them to the people who inhabit them. To get take away what was once private and give it back to the public creating a sense of empowerment on the place where we live.

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Fig. 37 Laure Prouvost. Deep See Blue Surrounding You/Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre, 2019

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Fig. 38 Shilpa Gupta. “Untitled (Mechanical Residential Gate Swinging Back and Forth Breaking the Wall),” 2019

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Fig. 39 Rozana Montiel, Stand Ground, 2018

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CASE STUDY:

CREATE A CONNECTION

BREAK DOWN THE WALL

CURRENT SITUATION

STAND GROUND / VENICE ARSENALE ROZANA MONTIEL / 2018

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Fig. 41,42 Rozana Montiel, Stand Ground, 2018

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CASE STUDY: STAND GROUND / VENICE ARSENALE ROZANA MONTIEL / 2018

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The Venice Biennale is hosted in the Arsenale, which is a great and big space, but it lacks a strong connection to the outdoors. In this proposal, Rozana Montiel Studio proposes to create a better connection by erasing a section of the wall, allowing visitors to see what is happening outside. A projector would feed live video from a camera outside the Arsenale onto the wall. Also, the wall would be reconstructed on the floor.

This way, she transforms an element that used to create a barrier and uses it to connect.

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PROJECT I: ANALCO RESIDENCE

Fig. 43 HOUSE IN ANALCO

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MISSING CONNECTION Facing the analco park and market sits an abandoned house. The only thing that remains of the house is the facade, dating back to the XIX century. Behind the facade are a few walls, and a big garden that extends towards the center of the block. This project proposes opening the facade, creating a connection between the park and the interior garden, using it as an extension or green space for the community.

Fig. 44 ANALCO PARK

Fig. 45 ANALCO QUARTER

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1-Analco Park (market) 2-Access 3-Abandoned house 4-Abandoned garden 5-Houses in use

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ABANDONED HOUSE Sitting on a historical part of the city of Puebla in the center of Mexico lies the Analco park. It holds a famous food market every weekends and is an active park every day. Most of the buildings around are active with shops and housing. But this house, directly facing the park has been abandoned, with only the first structural elements remaining.

What has been preserved of the house is the historical facade, but even thought it was once an element to connect, and entrance to the hosue, now it has become a barrier. It hides an empty space from the public, creating a dead space in one of the most active parts of the city.

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FACADE TO PARK

HISTORY The house was constructed in the XIX century, covering a length of half the block. It was originally a house for a middle-class family, done in the common style of its time. It was abandoned in the 1950s, eventually falling into the property of the government.

Repairs were done to the facade, but the rest of the house was left to deteriorate. After a cleaning process, all that remains is the facade, 5-7m of walls and an empty garden. The garden behind the facade was briefly used as a parking lot but in the last few years nature has taken over it in complete abandonment.

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CURRENT SITUATION:

1-Analco Park (market) 2-Access 3-Abandoned house 4-Abandoned garden

FACADE TO PARK

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HOW TO OPEN THE FACADE?

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Fig. 50 Photocollage of possible openings on facade in analco house by author (Facade of Analco House, 2018, Google maps)

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OPEN TO THE MARKET

KNOCK DOWN THE FACADE

CURRENT SITUATION

Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz

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Strategy: In the abandoned house, the facade had become a barrier to link the interior patio to the park. This proposal consists of knocking down the facade, reconstructing it on the floor in front of the entrance. The back facade is already destroyed, so the connection between the park and the back garden would be free. It would then be necessary to step on the old facade to enter the new public space, transforming what was a barrier into a connection.

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1-Analco Park (market) 2-Open Access 3-Facade on the street 4-Market extension 5-Public garden

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PARK/MARKET EXPANSION By opening the facade, it is now possible to expand the park and market into the empty plot. The few walls and small roofs that remains would function as an access to the new green space. With this strategy, the use would change from a private space to a public one.

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FACADE TO PARK

NEW USES The new space would be initially an extension of the existing park and market. Completely open to it, the new green space would invite the people to go inside. Eventually it could be appropriated by the community, as it would be one of few green spaces in the quarter. They could use it to host events, make urban gardening or use it as an urban living room, exteriorizing their everyday activities.

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PROPOSAL:

1-Analco Park (market) 2-New Access 3-Facade on the street 4-Market extension 5-Public garden

FACADE TO PARK

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ABANDONED HOUSE

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1-Closed access to house 2-Abandoned remaining walls 3-Garden

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PARK/MARKET EXPANSION

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1-Reconstructed facade on street level 2-Open Access 3-New public garden

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CONCLUSION

As the meaning of art has changed, so has the value we give to it. What was considered important, the materiality, the technique, has given way to the action, the immaterial. Now, it is through absence that we seek meaning. The act of unbuilding has value because it provides connections, in space and in time, and it reveals what is hidden.

Those who love life do not seek to change reality, destroy it, or unbuild it. The process is reserved pretty much for those who are a little fed up with the world. We live in a space that we think of as immobile. But there seems to be a human need for change. We build, we demolish, we rebuild. The city can behave like a living organism that mutates, changing ideas and connections. What is needed is to reveal again that history, what is underneath, to show the spaces that are left behind.

The act of unbuilding is in itself revolutionary. Our culture is hidden behind closed walls, and to grasp it, we need to uncover it. That is why by subtracting the material it is possible to get to what is important.

Our lives seem to revolve around the normality, a static idea of the world.

What is needed is to break that normality, to destroy what surrounds us, to unbuild it, so that we can question it.

“completion through removal completion through collapse completion through emptiness�

#33

Gordon Matta-Clark

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I I CA

RVED IN STONE

Fig. 59 Anish Kapoor, Oracle, 2002

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Why do we modi

The idea of modifying the world is what makes us human. But it is only recently that the human had a visible impact on the world. We began to modify reality according to our needs, changing landscapes to build cities, or changing the natural course of a river to get water, or carving paths through mountains to create roads. This is what defines our current era. So, it is strange that the value of a person can be measured only by what he builds and not by what he unbuilds.

Now information is now consumed at all times, but it is only to allow for creation.

I read so that I can write. I learn so that I can teach. The human is no longer seen as an object in the world, but as a means to add something to it, the way we look at animals, buildings, or things, This idea is inherent to the way we live and participate in society. An economy growing at less than 3%, is considered in recession. There seems to be a pressure to think of value as something that is only achieved through addition. But there comes a point where there is too much creation, too many new ideas. Now the idea of creating something new makes me sick.

fy our reality?

There is then a duality between the value we give to the new, and the importance we give to memory. When we build a house, we don’t give value to the mountain being carved, but to the stones that are placed. We seem to forget that the human can’t really create anything new. We must begin by modifying what already exists. Even we are created by our own mother and father. All of what is new can be traced back to something else. That way, the act of building and unbuilding become one and the same, but it is idea of modifying our experience of it that is valuable.

We can then create that value by daring to modify the natural landscape and the built environment. The same way that nature has something that we seek, cities can be seen as a set of limits waiting to be liberated. For the human is a creature that imposes limits between spaces, finding it natural to separate, categorize and build walls, only to then break those limits, merge these categories, and, therefore, set them free.

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Mirrored Reality Fig. 60 Francisco Goya, The Meadow of San Isidro, 1788

Transformed Reality Fig. 61 Francisco Goya, A Pilgrimage to San Isidro, 1823

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Mirror or trans

The human modifies the world to change his relationship and his distance to it. When he does, it is called art. But the meaning of this action does not derive from the object itself, as meaning is not possessed but only given. It is only through the action of modifying that we get the meaning. The act of unbuilding becomes an act of revelation of a truth that is underneath, and an affirmation of our own freedom.

But what turns the act of unbuilding into art?

The word “Art” used to be related to mimesis. “The word is Greek and means imitation though in the sense of representation. Plato and Aristotle spoke of mimesis as the representation of nature. According to Plato, all artistic creation is a form of imitation” #1 So, for them art was only the representation of the world.

Destruction as an imitation of nature.

But that meaning does not fully apply.

Over the years the meaning of art has broadened, as Leon Trotsky argued “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” #2 Destruction as a way to shape the world.

form reality

If we take both definitions as valid, it means that art can either mirror or transform realty. It can be seen as mimesis, for example, when an artist creates a realist painting, or an author writes a memoir. Or it can be transformative by painting from imagination or writing fiction. But it could be argued that in both cases, they are creating something new, something that does neither of the proposed definitions. One cannot represent reality faithfully, only subjectively, nor can it be transformed, since the artist is just creating another object. What is being transformed, in reality, is the paint itself used in a painting, and the ink used to write a book. Because they existed before the artist and exist, in a different way, after him.

Art can either mirror or transform reality

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staked tree to keep it straight Fig. 62 lian hangzhuan. Vineyard Support Stake, 2018

if we were to let nature run free, we would not get a placid, perfect park, but a wet, obscure piece of forest.

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Muta

ble space

The built world needs to be opened, destroyed, unbuilt, to reveal its true identity. In nature, everything appears to be open.

There is no difference between what you see and what you get.

If you see a tree, or a rock or a lake, there is no need to define it, or even to represent it, as language would chang it. It is only when the human modifies the environment, that hidden meanings begin to appear. A park in the center of a city, for example, which seems to be a piece of land where nature can be free, there is in reality only a superficial liberty. But if we were to dig under the grass and earth, we would probably find a concrete sewer tubes, parking space, or even metro lines. If we were to stay there for a long time, we would see maintenance workers who cut the trees and grass, so the park doesn’t get too humid and full of shadows.

We could also see plants that were harvested in other places, with different climates and soils, which were brought to the park to achieve a desire, aesthetic effect. Because, if we were to let nature run free, we would not get a placid, perfect park, but a wet, obscure piece of forest. In a way, the built enviornment can be thought as two different worlds, one which we can see, aimed at creating a specific feeling or action from its users, and one that is hidden, which contains the real nature of a place.

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Land art examined the human ability to control the landscape by unbuilding it.

This makes you wonder what influence does humanity have in nature?

Fig. 63 Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969

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It could be said that land art was revolutionizing the concept of a mutable landscape, but humans have done so for hundreds of years.

Some examples of this are the carvings in Nazca, Egypt pyramids, or Stonehenge. What is different in their approach is what they seek that Land art was not supposed to work as a monument of religion, or a cemetery, instead, it took meaning only in the action of changing, carving and moving earth. Robert Smithson was working in nature, as one of the first land artist, with works that modified landscapes by

removing land, or shifting its shape.

Land art examined the human ability to control the landscape by unbuilding it, and then, by failing to do so.

One example of this is a piece called “Double Negative� done by Michael Heizer in 1969, in which he displaced 244,000 tons of earth on two sides of a canyon, leaving only the empty void of what was there. This makes you wonder what influence does humanity have in nature? Is it natural to change the landscape, or does it change us? What is the best way to live on earth?

Fig. 64 Daren Frankish. Stonehenge, 2016.

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Site

Non-Site

Fig. 65 Oppenhein, Dennis. Beebe Lake Ice Cut, 1969

Fig. 66 Salcedo, Doris. Shibbboleth.

2007

“The relation of a non-site to the site is also like that of language to the world: it is a signifier and the site is that which is signified�

#3

Robert Smithson, Theory of Non-Sites

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Their work was done in empty landscapes, instead of a gallery.

Robert Smithson explained this idea by distinguishing between the two concepts,

made by these artists has disappeared through the natural process of entropy.

Nature has taken back control of the landscapes.

he called “site” to the natural spaces, mountains, lakes, canyons, and every space where art could be observed in a real place. Then he called non-site, to the places where nature was only represented, in galleries, drawings, and pictures. “The relation of a non-site to the site is also like that of language to the world: it is a signifier and the site is that which is signified” #3 He calls non-site to what before, we called representation, a mirror to reality, such as language and painting, and site to actions that were modifying a real context. The difference between them is also the difference between looking at a park thinking it is a natural space and looking at it knowing that it is a man-made representation of nature.

Smithson explained that “Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.” #4 This is what land artist wanted to illustrate by mutating the landscape, helping us see the true nature of the world. Land art wanted to map our location in the world and in time. Now, almost all of the work

It was the ideas of land art, that made it possible to think about modifying our environment to reveal its true nature.

In natural landscape that is earth and time, and in the city that is history. The mutability of nature is closely related to the idea of freedom, of discovering what is underneath. Nature instead proposes a different context, one in which everything is in constant decay where it is impossible to uncover truth because everything is out in the open. It is humans that oppose nature, that seek meaning from it.

While Michel Heizer was digging tons of earth in a deserted canyon, there was a revolution in Paris, fueled by thoughts of change, but, this time, it was in the urban landscape. Matta-Clark saw land artists as running away from social and cultural problems of the time, instead of taking the same ideas to the city.

“You do not shy away from destruction and from hard times. That is the central message in a lot of his works. How can you extract beauty from devastation?”. #5

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Fig. 67 Nick Pena, Untitled, 2005

Fig. 68 Matta-Clark, Gordon. Conical Intersect. 1975.

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Matta-Clark worked with Robert Smithson after studying architecture. It was from this that he began to think about modifying the world around by unbuilding it. “(Matta-Clark) meets Robert Smithson and other land artists and gets very excited about the possibilities of working with landscape, without building stuff.” #6 Gordon Matta-Clark saw the environment in which he lived as a place where the reality was behind closed doors. He saw the city as a set of limits. What he attempted to do with his work was cut open the walls, removing floors, cutting buildings in half, and creating voids in the facades of buildings, in order to expose the true nature of society.

“His practice drew attention to a failure in contemporary architecture and urban planning, a failure of the city to address the needs and everyday reality of the people who lived here. The questions he asked and potential solutions he proposed are still relevant to today.” #7 What was thought as fixed, he tried to move, and cut. He appropriated the space in which our lives take place.

His work was done at the same time as big modernist building were being praised

and studied. His father worked for Le Corbusier, criticizing his rigidity and lack of care to how people lived. He said Le Corbusier’s buildings “failed to contain the kind of man who lived there, a creature that lived in perfect harmony with society and his work” The notion of changing a building, of breaking a facade, against the backdrop of modernism became shocking.

When asked about this change, MattaClark proposed that: “Buildings are fixed entities in the minds of most people.

The notion of mutable space is taboo, especially in one’s own house. People live in their space with a temerity that is frightening.

Home owners generally do little more than maintain their property. Once an institution like the home in objectified in such a way, in does understandably raise moral issues” #8 . The main concept of his building cuts was the mutability of space through appropriation, which he called “unbuilding”. The concept was influenced by the appropriations of Duchamp (Matta-Clark’s godfather), and was used before, outside of the city environment, by Land artists.

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Fig. 69 Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974

Fig. 70 Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept Expectations, 1965

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The presence of ab

sence

It is only by peeling back the layers of an object, that you are allowed to see its history. That was done literally by Gordon Matta-Clark, when he cut the facade of a building to let us see what is behind. But this idea can also ask the question of how do we treat what exists? Should we modify something that is valuable in order to reveal its past?

“It isn’t that the past cast light on the present or the present cast light on the past, rather an image that in which the Then and the Now come into constellation like a flash of lightning.” #9 One way of revealing the past is by carving a piece of it. Once there is something missing, there is a shift in our perception of it. We can think of anything as mutable instead of fixed. What is removed becomes more important that what is left, and that way, we pay more attention to it. In his writing, Matta-Clark refers to “the pregnant void, the illumination of the full void.” #10 This idea was also practiced before, when the cut is more important than the object. Lucio Fontana worked by doing the same action to his canvas, he was a painter that worked at the same time as Matta-Clark, he said “Painted canvas and standing plaster figures no longer have any reason to exist. What is needed is a change in both essence and form. It is necessary to have an art that is in greater harmony with the needs of the new spirit.” #11 Although he is not uncovering anything, nor breaking something that has value, he is showing us the action of unbuilding. He stopped painting, and instead he made cuts with a knife on the canvas. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space.” #12

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Fig. 71 Rachel Whiteread, House study, 1992

It is only by peeling back the layers of an object, that you are allowed to see its history.

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This idea of carving a void to

Or in the recent proposal by

gain meaning can be seen in the works of several contemporary artist that were influenced by land art and by MattaClark. One of these artists is Rachel Whiteread. She is part of the young British artists and deals entirely with the idea of materializing the void. By filling a normal house with concrete, and then removing the original material, she is giving importance to a memory of what was there, even though there is nothing there anymore. “They are almost like doodles.” She says “It’s what I’ve always done. I was totally interested in the physical world and would always be making something, playing around with bits and pieces I’d found, changing them from one thing into another.” #13 In a way, the importance is in proving that an object is mutable, that it is possible to modify it in some way.

We can see them changing not only the object but how we perceive them. One example of this is the work by Anish Kapoor, who carves voids in rocks. He doesn’t add anything to it, just leaves them bare, with perfect square voids, as he says, “Meaning will take care of itself, what one has to do is get on and #14 make the work.”.

Jonas Dahlberg we can see a void that is meant to remember the past. The proposal was to cut a section of a small mountain in memory of the 2011 Norway attacks. The proposal was almost identical to another proposal by a land artist, Walter De Maria in 1971. He also proposed a cut through a mountain, this time for the Olympic games of Berlin.

De Maria said about the project, “If the Large Earth Sculpture is an expression of myself only . . . then it is a failure.

It must express the feelings of most of the people, not only in Germany, but in the world. It must have universal interest and meaning.” #15 There is then a difference between destroying something, and unbuilding it. When we destroy, history is erased, but by taking only a piece of it, we are giving it more value. And it is the same when we think about buildings, that can seem so immutable, just by taking a piece of it, we shine a light on them. History that would otherwise be relegated to nothing is made unforgettably visible. Ai Weiwei treated his work as a way to remember.

He mentions that “If a nation cannot #16 face its past, it has no future”.

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Fig. 72 Walter De Maria, Olympic Mountain Project, 1972

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Fig. 73 Jonas Dahlberg, Memory Wound, 2012

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Fig. 74 Notre dame cut, by author with: Notre dame aerial view, Google Maps

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Fig. 75 Notre dame cut, by author with: Cellcode. “Dame Satellite Cathedral View Notre Paris.�

Carving No

tre Dame

By carving deeper into the spaces affected by the fire, remouving all the limits, it is possible to connect Notre Dame to the plaza in front of it and also to the park behind. It takes away the gothic idea of connection and modernized it with an idea of openess and connection.

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Fig. 76 Atelier Lyon, RAAAF. Bunker 599, 2010.

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CASE STUDY:

CREATE A CONNECTION

CUT THE BUILDING

CURRENT SITUATION

BUNKER 599 / NEW DUTCH WATERLINE RAAAF + Atelier Lyon / 2010

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Fig. 79 Atelier Lyon, RAAAF. Bunker 599, 2010.

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CASE STUDY: BUNKER 599 / NEW DUTCH WATERLINE RAAAF + Atelier Lyon / 2010

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The concept of openness is inherently opposed to a bunker. As it is a construction meant to protect, divide and limit, opposed to the contemporary culture based on equality and openness. With this in mind, the project opens one of the old bunkers scattered in The Netherlands. A path towards the coast was created, one that slices a piece of the bunker, making it possible to enter the space which was once so enclosed. The value of the project does not come from the new access, as one could just walk around the bunker, but from the act of cutting, and the rejection of value that bunker represented. Now that is open it is possible to see what is inside of it. It is no longer a bunker, but something else, something that has a meaning that represents our culture.

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CINEMA VA

PROJECT II: RIEDADES

Fig. 79 CINEMA VARIEDADES

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MISSING CONNECTION Facing the biggest park in the center of Mexico City sits an abandoned cinema. Buit behind an old facade, the oly part that remains is the shell of the abandoned building. On the back of the cinema there is an empty block center.

This project proposes opening the facade, creating a connection between the park and the block center using the cinema as a passage between the two and as a new exhibition space.

Fig. 80 ALAMEDA PARK

Fig. 81 HISTORICAL CENTER OF MEXICO CITY

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1-Park Alameda 2-Closed access 3-Abandoned lobby 4-Abandoned projection room 5-Empty block center 6-Commercial building 7-Parking lot

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ABANDONED CINEMA The abandoned cinema sits in front of the biggest parks in the historical center of Mexico City. It is on one of the central avenues of the quarter, but there is a deficient connection to it and to the park. There is also a big and unused space in the center of its block which also has a bad connection to the cinema and the park. The cinema retains the facade of an old house, and the space is composed of an entrance hall and a big projection room in the back. There are also 2 more smaller projection rooms in the second level. As it is completely abandoned, all interior walls are missing, with only the main concrete shell remaining.

Projection room

Lobby

Fig. 83-84 Halvam. Los Cines de La Ciudad, 2010.

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FACADE TO PARK

HISTORY The cinema was opened on 1956, retaining the facade of an old house called “Casa Hagenbeck�. The rest of house was demolished in the renovation. During its active years, the cinema saw the golden age of Mexican cinema, having one of the biggest screens on the historical center of the city. It was never renovated and later it was abandoned. By 2011, a part of it was cleared, leaving the rest in bad condition.

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CURRENT SITUATION:

1-Park Alameda 2-Closed access 3-Abandoned cinema lobby 4-Abandoned projection room 5-Empty block center

FACADE TO PARK

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HOW TO OPEN THE FACADE?

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Fig. 88 Photocollage of possible openings on facade cine variedades by author (image of cinema variedades, 2018, google maps)

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OPEN TO THE PARK

SLICE THE BUILDING

CURRENT SITUATION

Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz

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Strategy The historical facade of the cinema has become a barrier to connect the park, the interior patio of the block, and to the building itself. In the proposal, one of the pedestrian paths of the park would continue, splitting the cinema in two. What remains is a link between the two public spaces. The building itself would also be open, making a unique space on the urban landscape, making it possible to enter the void where once stood the building.

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1-Park Alameda 2-Open Access 3-Exhibition space 4-Passage 5-Block Center 6-Commercial building 7-Parking lot

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EXPOSITION SPACE / PASSAGE The pedestrian path of the park expands and guides a cut across the building, creating a new space which connects the Alameda park with the interior of the building and the center of the block. This action would activate both the empty space and the abandoned building. The cinema would reactivate, housing exhibitions and create an active path between the two public spaces. With only one action, the building is transformed from a border and limiting space to a space for connection.

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FACADE TO MARKET

NEW USES With this cut, the cinema would be open again, transformed into an exposition space featuring the history of Mexican golden age of cinema. It would also function as a passage between the park and the previously hidden center of the block. Opening the space, the building would not function as a closed private space but as a bridge between what is public.

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PROPOSAL:

1-Park Alameda 2-Access 3-New Passage 4-Block center

FACADE TO PARK

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ABANDONED CINEMA

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1-Closed access to the park 2-Abandoned lobby 3-Abandoned small projection rooms 4-Abandoned projection room

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EXPOSITION SPACE / PASSAGE

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2

4

2 1

1

1-Continuation of pedestrian path (using the same material) 2-Exhibition space 3-Straight cuts of the walls, floors, and windows 4-Access to block center

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The world, for the most part, seems immutable. As we learn to adjust to life, the idea of modifying the world around us dissappears.

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CONCL

USION

The idea of modifying the world is what makes us human. But what we seek is not only to modify but to gain meaning, to leave a mark, to remember. When everything that surrounds us seems so normal, so consumed by caving, creativity, creation. As we walk down the streets we see only the surface of new buildings made of glass mixed with old ones made of stone. And they both seem immutable. Then we just need one action, one small cut that makes us realize the world is not a fixed entity. There is history and value behind every object. As the world, like the human body, is not a perfect machine made for living, but is full of crevices, full of opportunities and value that can be found. We can modify what was previously built and doing it maybe we can find something that is behind the surface.

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III

ERASING THE WALL

Fig. 96 Edward Hopper, sunlight in a cafeteria, 1958 Hopper did not draw window frames, he created a direct connection to the outside

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Why do we need windows?

In nature there are no limits, every element merges into another, a tree with the ground, a rock with the earth, the sea with the beach. There seems to be a continuous space in which everything occurs, one space for every action. This is what is called “nature” or “outside”, different from the space we live, for the human is a creature that imposes limits between spaces, finding it natural to separate, categorize and build walls, only to then break those limits, merge these categories, and, therefore, build windows.

In the creation of these limits lies a human necessity for refuge. The most mundane form of architecture is built to cover those basic needs. The need to stop the rain from reaching inside, or the snow, or the wind. For that purpose, roofs and walls are built. They deflect the weather around the building.

The roof, for example, is waterproof, and slanted, so that the rain falls into

In a building there are many ways in which the outside connects to the inside. Tubes that get water in and out, electric cables, air conditioning systems, doors which can be opened and closed; but the most vulnerable one is the window. Maybe because it is made of such a fragile material, much weaker than the stone, brick, or concrete that make up the walls. The window would be the first to break over time or by accident. Curtains are even placed because the windows don’t do an effective job in keeping the sun out.

So why, then, is there a need to build windows? There is no practical use for them. If the building needs ventilation, it is possible to build hatches in the roof, or high up in a wall. If it needs to illuminate the space it could have domes of light, interior patios, or artificial lighting. Many solutions could work, and would maintain the interior space protected, and in a perfect

tubes that collect it and transport it around the house, and into the vast array of underground sewage systems.

All these connections exist to make sure the inside stays dry and warm. And the same thing happens when it’s warm outside and the interior stays cool and protected from the sun. The borders of a buildings seem to be in a constant battle with the elements. But once the exterior and interior are defined, there is a human need to connect them.

climate. But there is something surreal about a building with no windows. It would feel the same as inside a cave, or deep underground, completely removed from the world above. Windows then, are necessary because humans are not comfortable in a space that is fully inside or fully outside, but in a narrow margin between them. As much as there is a practical need to protect the inside from the outside, there is a human need to connect them.

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“Only man, as oppose to nature, has the faculty of binding and unbinding … we experience as connected only what we have previously isolated in some way.

The human being is a connecting creature and a bordering creature.” #1 Georg Simmel, Bridge and Door

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A connecting and bordering creature

Before two categories can

in the spring, and take on a green,

be connected, first they must be divided. There is no outside without an inside. As Georg Simmel writes in his essay Bridge and Door, “Only man, as oppose to nature, has the faculty of binding and unbinding we experience as connected only what we have previously isolated in some way” The “human being” Simmel argues, is a “connecting creature and a bordering creature”. #1 Humans understand the world by categorizing it. This is inherent to language, which separates concepts.

It is impossible to think about the world or a space as one thing, but instead it is through an accumulation of concepts that form a situation.

This idea of categorization is innate to humans, and it is the way to learn about the world. For example, a child that is learning to recognize his surroundings can’t initially see a tree and the earth from where it grows as only one connected object. First, he categorizes the concept of a tree. He sees a variety of trees and gathers what they have in common. He can see that almost every tree is tall, with a round, brown trunk that, separates forming thinner branches high up.

From them leaves grow. These leaves however, change with time. They grow

bright color, and in autumn they begin to lose that vitality, and they start to turn yellow and brown and weaker, until they fall to the ground. The tree itself also changes with time, getting bigger and thicker every year. But the idea of the ground is different. It is mostly flat and formed of earth which can be covered in grass, herbs, or even concrete or any type of flooring material. It does not change with time, or not without intervention. It is used to stand upon, or sit, or walk, and is what surrounds the earth. When a child, having these two separate ideas, sees the roots of a tree that go deep into the ground, running like a labyrinth of slimmer and more fragile branches, it can seem impossible. The ground is as much a part of the tree as its leaves or its trunk. It has always been just one thing, which is nature. But a tree and the ground are two concepts only because language dictates they are, and the roots are what connects them.

Simmel writes on this topic, “In nature everything can be seen as connected, but it can be seen as divided as well.

The unceasing transformation of matter and energy puts everything into relation to everything else, and make all singularities into one cosmos” #2

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Fig. 97 MXCity. Fachadas Del Centro Historico. 2016.

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“the window is an important mean by which this inner ecosystem then interacts with the larger ones” #4 Duncan Patterson

Going back to the division between the concepts of inside and outside, Umberto Eco tells the story of “The man who started the history of architecture” as the first man to take shelter and then conceptualize that space by giving it a name and a purpose in his mind. “Sheltered from the wind and rain, he examines the cave that shelters him, by daylight or by the light of a fire…Once the storm is over, he might leave the cave and reconsider it from the outside; there he would note the entryway as ‘hole that permits passage to the inside’, and the entrance would recall to his mind the image of the inside: entrance hole, covering vault, walls surrounding a space within. Thus an ‘idea of the cave’ takes shape” #3 The inside, then, becomes an ecology, different from the outside, with their own climate, feeling, and appearance. “The perimeter of the house is that which stands between these ecologies, the included ecologies, and external, excluded ecologies. Then the window is an important mean by which this inner ecosystem then interacts with the larger ones, as well as the door and several other ones.” #4 There is a lager ecology (exterior) containing smaller ecologies, (interior) and it is in the communication, the threshold between them, which is what unites them. The space that is neither inside nor outside, but the limit, belonging to both.

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“When there is beautiful nature everywhere, it is not possible to see it anymore. The landscape has a need to be restricted, to be dimensioned through one radical decision� #7 Le Corbusier, Une petite maison

Fig. 98 Alex Chinneck, World Revealed, 2019

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FROM

CA V E T O G L A S S

As human dwellings first evolved, the problem was not to open these thresholds, as a cave is already mostly window, but to stop the weather from coming in. Walls were needed to maintain safety. But as construction began, walls were built. The technique did not allow for big spans of open space, so the windows were small and practical, just to ventilate or illuminate an area, often using only unglazed openings on the roof of high up on the walls.

The doors, on the contrary, continued to get bigger and more important, and the purpose continues to be safety. Some castles were built with small windows to protect it from any attack, and huge doors that retracted to isolate it. For Simmel, the door “overcomes the separation between inside and outside and creates a stronger sensation of separation from all that is outside this space than that produced by a mere undifferentiated wall� #5 So, the door was the main form of connection for a time. But the door only serves the purpose of entering or leaving a space. It just acts in one direction at a time, as the interior or exterior can’t be connected once the door is closed. Then, as technique advanced, the idea of the window as a more meaningful way of connection became possible. The best example of this is gothic architecture. It took the light that was coming in, and transformed it with their stained-glass windows, changing the space inside. Even as the effect is felt only in one direction, it is a deeper connection as a person can be aware of the weather from outside, or the position of the sun. The necessity to see time pass by, and to see the light move, demarcating time, is a primary human need.

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Fig. 99 Cave /

Fig. 100 Medieval /

Fig. 101 Gothic / Sainte chapelle

Fig. 102 Barragan / Casa Barragan

Fig. 103 Le Corbusier / Villa Savoye

Fig. 104 Philip Johnson / Glass house

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If the sun fell to a window that was tinted blue, the entire world became blue, and it affects the way to understand it. Proust wrote about windows in a

the ground, the terrestrial, nor the sky, which symbolizes the divine, but only the landscape. In contrast to other windows, when one moves, the view remains the

gothic church“There was one among them which was a tall panel composed of a hundred little rectangular windows, of blue principally...; but, either because a ray of sunlight had gleamed through it or because my own shifting vision had drawn across the window, whose colors died away and were rekindled by turns, a rare and transient fire” #6 Proust wrote in the XIX century, when Gothic windows were centuries old. In the daily life of his characters, the new, big and transparent windows acted almost as a social catalyst. Marcel, the protagonist, sees the light turned on in the window of Odette, who he loves, and knows she is there, or Marcel’s aunt, who never leaves her room but still knows everyone that is in town because she sees them walking on the street through the window next to her bed. With this social exchange we become who we are in relation to others. The window is just a tool to contextualize ourselves, and to interact to what surrounds us, either from the outside to seeing it.

In the XX century, with modern construction techniques like concrete and steel, the openings could be any shape or scale. In Villa Savoye, for example, Le Corbusier, used long and horizontal windows spanning the entire facade. They are directed so it is not possible to see

same. It acts, with a controlled plan, almost filtering what part of nature goes in, thus appearing like a painting that never changes. Le Corbusier explains this idea: “Landscape, omnipresent on all sides, omnipotent, becomes tiring. In conditions like this, when there is beautiful nature everywhere, it is not possible to see it anymore. The landscape has a need to be restricted, to be dimensioned through one radical decision” #7 The glass wall was also a result of modern construction techniques.

Possibly, the conclusion of the movement to open the windows more and more, ever since the small opening on masonry wall. Its idea is to eliminate any obstruction and have a complete view on both directions. This happens for example in Philip Johnson’s Glass House or Mies’ Farnsworth house. The views are commanding, almost of surveillance. But instead of reaching a connection, they seem to alienate the building from the environment. Pallasma said of them “A glass wall weakens the essential tension between the home and world”. #8 That is because glass walls are trying to erase the threshold completely and have an experience that is not real, of being immersed in nature, when in reality the division becomes bigger.

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Fig. 107 MAD MEN, 2010

Fig. 105 VIVRE SA VIE, 1962

Fig. 106 LOST IN TRANSLATION, 2003

Fig. 108 ANTICHRIST, 2009

Fig. 109 PLANET OF THE APES, 2001

Fig. 110 US, 2018

Fig. 111 BREAKFAST AS TIFFANY’S, 1961

Fig. 112 ETERNAL SUNSHIN..., 2004

Fig. 113 REAR WINDOW, 1954

Fig. 114 FANNY & ALEXANDER, 1982

Fig. 115 FRIENDS, 1994

Fig. 116 SEX AND THE CITY, 1998

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Windows in cinema “Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the real one? But what does it matter what reality is outside of myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?”

#9

Baudelaire, “windows”

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Fig. 117 Geoffrey Ansel Agrons. Rapprochement, 2017

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A tree inside the house

If a house is left alone, after some years, it will begin to cave in to nature. The first thing to give in would be the weakest point of the building, which are the windows. They would separate from the wall just enough for the seal to be lost. Ants, spiders, cockroaches, anything that lives around the house would seek refuge. It would take only a few months for insects and spiders to build their homes in some obscure corner of the house. With no one to kill them, and with free access to a safe place, they would become almost impossible to eradicate.

Through the gaps in the windows, rain and wind would also be able to enter. The moisture and lack of isolation would cause the house to be several degrees apart from what humans need to be conformable. It seems the margin of comfort is too small for humans, but for plants, for example, the margin is wider, and they can exist in a bigger range of conditions. Moss would also grow freely in the moist environment, as well as some types of grass than could go in from the garden. The growth of vegetation inside the abandoned house would become a way to demarcate time.

Instead of watches or calendars, the weeds would go in further and further inside each week. The walls would not collapse in a long time, but the windows would break, the door would rot, and the roof would probably collapse due to the weight of vegetation and the damage water causes to concrete structures. Michel Houellebecq wrote about this process of decay against nature: “The industrial objects seem to drown, progressively submerged by the proliferation of layers of vegetation. Occasionally they give the impression of struggling, of trying to return to the surface; then they are swept away by a wave of grass and leaves and plunge back into a plant magma, at the same time as their surfaces fall apart, revealing microprocessors, batteries, and memory cards.� #10

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Fig. 118 Baracco+Wright Architects, and Linda Tegg. Repair: Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2018

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It would not take a long time for a normal house to become almost indistinguishable from nature. To prevent this, it would be safer to build thicker walls made of resistant materials and forget about windows. But there is a human need to take nature indoors. This can be seen, for example, in the potted plants and trees that many people take into their houses, or even in the tradition of bringing a pine tree inside for Christmas, which itself can bring insects, and anyway it is already dead so after a few weeks it must be thrown away or else it would start to rot in the living room. The need for nature can also be seen in the dogs or cats that people have as pets in their houses. When people grow old, it is normal to have a desire to leave cities and move to the countryside. People become frustrated living in a city, of all the concrete, pollution, and lack of vegetation, and instead look for houses deep in nature, in the middle of the forest or in a mountain range.

But if there was a true need to live among nature, we would have to feel comfortable as well in the house that has been invaded by it. If what we want is to be taken away from what has been manufactured and into a space that is as pure and natural as a forest, people could stand a patch of grass growing between the floor tiles in their bedrooms, or a tree root that is invading a wall. But this does not happen. When a plant is brought indoors it is always inside a vase or a pot and placed over the smooth surface of the floor. It would be impossible to live with a plant coming out of a small mountain of earth in the corner of a room. If the rain accidentally slips through an open window, or someone spills water on the floor or in a wall, it is immediately mopped, dried, and cleaned.

It is impossible to imagine a puddle of water in the middle of a hallway, even though, in the street outside, there would be nothing strange about it, and children often jump over them.

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Fig. 119 Olafur Eliasson, Riverbed, 2014

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One example of how strange it is to take nature indoors is in the work made by Olafur Eliasson in the Luisiana museum in Denmark. Trying to recreate the landscape of his childhood in Iceland, he took 40 tons of Icelandic rock into the gallery of the museum. There were mountains of small grey rocks which the visitor had to step on to travel through the exhibition. On some parts the rocks were so high that they partly blocked the entrance to the galleries. And there was a small stream of water flowing over the rocks, like a small river in an immense landscape. This piece was called “Riverbed”.

What was so interesting about the piece is the feeling of strangeness that was felt by the visitors. Of course, if they walked over those same rocks next to a river in Iceland it would not be strange at all. But there was a feeling of something that shouldn’t be there. Three writers, Sjon, James McBride, and Daniel Kehlmann, commented on the piece: “My impression when I came to see the riverbed was that I had seen it before, because I am from Iceland. So, what we have here is 2 tons of my home country, at the same time it was like a moment in a dream when you enter a room, and something is not right, but familiar.” #11 The work also seemed to be inspired by the representation of nature that is usually brought into a museum in the form of a landscape painting. But looking at a painting does not have the same interaction as standing in nature.

The writers also commented: “It is much more real than a landscape on a canvas, but it is still an illusion, but at the same time it feels real. It blurs the line and it is not so clear whether it is art or nature.” #12 It seems that by letting nature truly come inside, something is lost. Maybe it is the separation that is needed in order to have, later, the connection. If everything is nature then there are no categories, just a continuous space. Perhaps what is needed is a space that is not completely natural or completely artificial. The space that is comfortable is a combination of the two. Maybe this is the kind of space that everyone seeks by bringing a potted plant or a dog to live inside.

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Fig. 120-121 Atelier FCJZ. Vertical Glass House, 2014

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The opposite of complately bringing nature inside would be a windowless room. One example of this is the vertical glass house, made

by Atelier FCJZ, in Shanghai. With the idea to turn a modernist house, like the glass house by Philip Johnson on its head, the house has no windows, instead the perimeter is made of a solid concrete wall, and on the roof there is only glass. All the floors inside the house are also made of glass, to permit light to reach all the levels, and the only view one has is of the sky. This is a response for a need of privacy from the owner of the house.

But the result is a completely isolated space, one that feels surreal. The architects at Atelier FCJZ commented on this feeling: “There’s a reason why meditation requires one to close their eyes. In shutting out the immediate environment, one hopes that the distractions of the world will momentarily recede to reveal empty calm.� #13 The same strange feeling that the riverbed produces, is felt when the opposite happens.

Something would not feel right even though it would be completely familiar. A connection is missing, a kind of context for your own body. It is through looking out the window that a sense of reality is produced.

It is through looking out the window that a sense of reality is produced.

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Fig. 122 Terradas Arquitectes. Barcelona Maritime Museum, 2013.

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CA S E S T U D Y

CREATE A CONNECTION

ERASE THE WALL

PREVIOUS SITUATION

MARITIME MUSEUM/ BARCELONA TERRADAS ARQUITECTES/ 2013

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AFTER

BEFORE

Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz

Fig. 124-125 Barcelona Maritime Museum facade, google maps, 2008-2018

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CA S E S T U D Y MARITIME MUSEUM/ BARCELONA TERRADAS ARQUITECTES/ 2013

PROJECT DESCRIPTION To modernize a building often means to open it. We open old factories into restaurants, or old containers into houses. In this project, the building that is opened used to be a shipyard near the coast of Barcelona. This is the last action they took in transforming it into a museum. They saw the limits of the building as mutable and changed the small windows that were designed to ventilate ships and opened them to the street and a small park. This way, the relation between the inside and outside changes. It is now the main entrance of the building, creating a surreal space with big openings to the public space.

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Fig. 126-127 John Baldessari. Baldessari Does Mies, 2009.

The artist John Baldessari closed the carefully directed windows in a building by Mies van der Rohe, replacing them inside with his own landscape paitings.

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Reality is outside For the human, the borders on the body are clear. Everything that happens outside the body seems to have no relation at all with what happens inside. The skin, the mouth, the hair, everything that is in contact with the exterior has a different color from what is inside. If we were to drain a body of all its blood and liquids, we would see that almost every organ has a dull grey color. The heart, that is usually pictured red and vibrant, would look pale grey, like an uncooked piece of meat. Our lungs would seem like two bags of plastic, as well as our muscles. The only organs that would retain their color are the eyes, the skin, the tongue. All the organs that are constantly receiving information from outside. Without those organs, our bodies would be sealed shut. Life would not be possible. Every time we breathe, we are invading the world. It is from what is seen, and felt, and tasted, that a conception of reality is created. There is nothing inside the body that informs us of where we are, or even of the passing of time. We rely on the interpretation of our brains about what we perceive, and that what we perceive is true.

People are constantly looking for the reality of their minds, and the reality as they see it, to be the same. Of course, all a human can use to look for it is thier own bodies. Juhani Pallasmaa wrote about this idea in his book the eyes of the skin, about how we experience reality, only with our bodies: “We are in constant dialogue and interaction with the environment, to the degree that it is impossible to detach the image of the self from its spatial and situational existence. ‘I am my body,’ Gabriel Marcel claims, but ‘I am the space, where I am,’ establishes the poet Noel Arnaud.” #14

People are constantly looking for the reality of their minds, and the reality as they see it, to be the same.

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Fig. 128 Ignasi Aballi / Un paisaje posible / 2016 The artist Ignasi Aballi writes down on the window things that we cannot see through it. Things like “air pollution”, or “radiation”.

Each time we look through a window, we invade the world

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Reality is exactly what humans are searching for. We experience the world though our senses and then make an image of it in our minds. That is what is represented in books exists and movies and paintings. What art expresses is an interpretation of reality. And it is also why humans have a need to reach out of their bodies, and look out, to make their own interpretation of reality. But, of course, that reality is subjective. Even when looking outside, and thinking it is an objective view of what exists in the world, like a bridge of information that travels undisturbed from one environment and the other, it will never provide an accurate representation. The view from a window offers only one perspective. What is seen is only a piece of the world. The rest of our conception of reality is a fabrication we make with our previous assumptions to fill in the gaps that are impossible to see.

It is impossible to look at the world how other see it. A person can only know how it is to be them, and with their personal memories and knowledge, create a subjective reality. Looking out the window forms then, a personal image of reality, which is a part of the self. Therefore, the framing of a window becomes an important of life. The name itself, “window” means, in old norse language, “wind eye”, acting as a way to take in the world, as much as our own eyes or mouth or skin. Each time we breathe, we reach out to the world and each time we look out, we reach out, trying to find meaning.

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Fig. 129 Shutterstock. “Sky Views.”

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Locating us in time Another reason we need windows in because a great part of the sense of reality comes from the passing of time. No person could function without the rhythm that each day brings. Every day, waking up, the sun is in constant change, and everyone adapts to it. For Proust, every time we wake up we must find ourselves again: “When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed.” #15 Without a clear idea of time, life would feel like a dream.

There is a human need to see time go by. And because time comes from outside our bodies, we need to see it in order to exist. What Proust uses as a guide, the light from the sun, is what allows everyone to place themselves in context. We wake up when the sun is just over the horizon, and we see it move though the day until in hides again on the opposite direction. Then we know that it is evening, and that the day is ending. As much as humans categorize, we are also a creature of rhythms. Most people do almost the same thing every day. And if someone were to watch us from above, it would seem that we are just repeating the same actions at the same time, like some innate impulse. That is why, when they plan a city underground, or a ship that would travel the space for years, they must include a fake sun, a fake sunrise and sunset, and a fake night. If they didn’t, our bodies would never adapt to that life.

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There is a human need to see time go by. And because time comes from outside our bodies, we need to see it in order to exist.

Fig. 130 Olafur Eliasson, Window, 1990 In this work light is projected in a room with no windows

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In some parts of the world it remains day or night for a long time.

In St. Petersburg, for example, there is a period of 80 days a year, from May to July, when nightfall never comes. The city’s location makes it unique, it is the most northern city with a high population. And those days which could seem endless, are a major tourist attraction of the city. What is so appealing is the surreal feeling of walking is city, bright as any day, but in the middle of the night. The streets are usually full of people, and the bars and restaurants can close until six in the morning. The rhythm of every person that lives there, changes. Some place wooden curtains over their windows to get the feeling of the night, and be able to sleep, while others go out at night and sleep during the day. But for everyone, the feeling of reality is lost, or changed, as light is what reveals that reality, and what allows everyone to place themselves in that context.

Dostoyevsky wrote about this strange phenomenon in a story called “White Nights”, after some days of pure light, walking around the city at night, he writes: “Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; after my fantastic nights! ... you see, men living in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float away like a dream, like a vision; ... not one hour of it is the same as another; the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun...” #16 Windows allow us to see the movement of the sun. They are necessary in order to align our sense of time and place by giving the possibility of looking at time pass by.

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Fig. 131-142 Windows to society

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We define ourselves in others Another aspect needed to

whilst individual, or a need to both

form a sense of reality is society.

We define ourselves only in relation to others. The same way that there is no inside without and outside, there is no “I” without “us”, or without “them”. Even though there is a push to conceive of a private space, an architecture of isolation, where it is possible to see the world without being looked at, like a glazed facade of a skyscraper or a window looking out into the woods, it is impossible to conceive of a city without windows.

Walking in a street would seem lifeless without them. The only buildings that have such characteristics are churches, and that is because they strive to something more meaningful than society, and that is the divine.

But looking into a house or a restaurant while walking in a busy street gives a sense of belonging. It is almost like being at the same time the stage and the spectator of life.

Everyone is aware of being watched and they accept the deal because without it there is only the self.

The window is more than a practicality or a way to change the ambiance of the space, but a social space in which interactions occur between the two ecologies. Simmel

connect with people and divide ourselves from others” #17 Almost all our being is based on the need to see and be seen.

That is why books are written and people read the news. Even if what is interesting is something bigger, like the divine or the eternal, life is mostly based on what is immediately in front. Through the windows we not only see nature or time, but also neighbors, people walking and living.

That is where most of the energy is going towards, the common, the society that makes life small rather than big. We define others as being part of a group, but in doing so we project ourselves into them. The act of categorization applies also to society. Ever since we are born we obtain knowledge through family.

The way a mother or a father acts is passed to the child, who learns the appropriate distance to the world.

Everyone is assigned a series of characteristics in relation to us, and a certain distance is established.

But those categories do not apply to the self. Instead, society is the way the world makes an impression on us. A city without windows then is unimaginable because there are no

wrote about this “tension bound within a dual process, a tension entangled within a need to be social

relations between people, no frame of reference for reality.

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PROJECT III:

San Lazaro church

CHURCH OF SAN LAZARO

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MISSING CONNECTION Most churches have limited access to light, which creates a dark and private space, opposite to our contemporary culture which praises openness and freedom. Next to a public garden in Mexico City sits such a church.

It has been abandoned for more than a century, with its only access facing a small parking lot. This project proposes opening the side facade of the church, erasing the wall to create an entrance from the garden and creating a new passage from the street. This way, it would activate the church while giving the garden and the neighboring public housing a new unique space.

SAN LAZARO GARDEN

10 MAYO QUARTER / MEXICO CITY

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1-Public garden 2-Main Access 3-Abandoned space 4-Parking lot 5-Public Housing

4

1

5 5

2

3

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ABANDONED CHURCH The abandoned church sits between two empty spaces, one that is a public garden and one that is used as a parking lot. Because of its history (dealing with leprosy patients from a nearby hospital) the access from the garden is blocked to the churcht. The garden is used by a complex of public housing in the block. The church itself has been cleaned and structurally maintained, but nature is slowly taking over it. These two open spaces each have access to the street, with only the church blocking a passage between the two streets.

CHURCH INTERIOR

CLOSED WALL TO THE GARDEN

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INTERIOR VIEW TO GARDEN

HISTORY The church was built as part of the hospital of San Lazaro in the XVI century. It was involved in the leprosy outbreak in Mexico, which made the church hermetic to avoid spreading the disease.

But for the last century it has been abandoned, only taking care of mayor structural problems. The image of abandonment is so appealing that in 1995 the Rolling Stones filmed a music video inside the church. Now there are no plans to be repaired because returning it to its original state would be too expensive.

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CURRENT SITUATION:

1-Public garden 2-Closed access 3-Abandoned space

FACADE TO GARDEN

1

2

3

SECTION

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HOW TO OPEN THE FACADE?

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Fig. 150 Photocollage of possible openings on facade of San Lazaro Church by author (image of San Lazaro Church, 2018, google maps)

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OPEN TO THE GARDEN

ERASE THE WALL

CURRENT SITUATION

Santiago Ruisanchez Diaz

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Strategy The facade of the church is now a barrier between to the people using the public garden. In this proposal, the facade would be opened completely, respecting only the structure of the church itself. This would create a connection between the public outdoor space and the tall indoor space of the church, creating a unique and surreal link between them. It would also serve as a passageway between the two sides of the block, and the two streets.

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1-Public garden 2-Main Access 3-New Event Space 4-Parking lot 5-Public Housing

4

1

5 5

2

3

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New event space for the community A church is associated with a closed and obscure environment. With the simple gesture of erasing the wall, the space inside the church would change completely, from being dark and grim, to an open and illuminated space. Because of its scale, the relation between the inside and outside would be unique, letting the sunlight and shadows from the trees come inside the church. Planned as an event space, it could also function as a passage between the two open spaces.

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INTERIOR VIEW TO GARDEN

NEW USES As with all the projects of this thesis, the church has an itinerant use. The church could function as an event space for the community. Instead of opening the church for tourism, it could be appropriated by the residents of the public housing complex inside the same block. When it is not in use, it can also work as an extension of the garden, and as a passageway between two streets.

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PROPOSAL:

1-Public garden 2-Open access 3-Event space for the community

FACADE TO GARDEN

1

2

3

SECTION

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ABANDONED CHURCH

2

1 4

1-Closed wall to the garden 2-Abandoned space 3-Public garden 4-Access to church

3

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NEW EVENT SPACE

2

1 4

3

1-Opening church to the garden 2-Event space for the community 3-Public garden 4-Access to church

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ABANDONED CHURCH

FACADE TO GARDEN / BEFORE

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NEW EVENT SPACE

FACADE TO GARDEN / AFTER

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“How ambivalent we are in relation to these categories of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ becomes apparent if we consider the coffin, which by virtue of being our final dwelling, our last defense against the elements, our final ‘inside,’ in large measure denies our true nature, but not entirely: In that case, the coffin too would have windows.” #18 Karl Ove Knausgaard, “Winter”

There is a wall between us

Conclusion Everything that is outside the body, nature, light, society, is labeled by us as the “world”, and everything that is inside, organs, thoughts, feelings, is defined as the “self”. It is only though merging those two categories that the concept of reality is created. The human reaches out into the world and, in return, the world pierces through the self. It is natural to want to see what is outside. A space that is completely shut off from the world, like a house with no windows, goes against our self, because it would be denying its very existence. The same applies to a space that has nothing of the self. What is needed is something that is neither of them, a blurring of the outline, of the limits of space.

The outline of the body is broken by looking out of the window. It serves no purpose to allow nature to come it, or people, or light. But there is something necessary about being that vulnerable to what we cannot see. What could be a wasted time and space turns into a way to reach out to the world. Inside there is comfort, warmth, protection, but outside there is knowledge. As we grow older we learn about the world. We see, we learn, and we adjust the image we have of it. Out of my window I can see the street and sidewalk and buildings. A tree sits right in front of me, casting its shadows over my desk and over the walls of my room. It used to be green and block the view of the street when I first came here in the summer, but it is winter now and it has lost its leaves, leaving only the empty branches. On the street below there are cars parked on both sides of the road. The surface of the street is a rough dark grey pavement, that contrasts with the light grey cobblestones of the sidewalks and the light brown of the buildings in front. I can see the inside of one of those buildings. It has a lot of narrow and tall windows, and the light goes through them and into the living rooms and kitchens. Sometimes I can see someone that lives there, but I can only see their shape, not so well defined. Their apartments must be much bigger than mine, which is made for students and are not very big. Next to that building there is a small supermarket, with the doors closed, and next to it there is a bakery shop, which I have never visited. On the sidewalk there are other trees and people walking and a group of motorcycles parked diagonally. Most people try to avoid the sun even though it is cold outside. Everyone is wearing thick coats which are blue or black or white. Just crossing the street two women are sitting in one of the concrete benches, talking to each other. One has a lit cigarette, and the other has her hands inside the pockets of her jeans. I can hear the sound of cars going by, and steps, and people talking.

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NOTES: THE ACT OF UNBUILDING 1. Georges Bataille. The Accursed Share’. Edited by ZONE BOOKS. New York, 1988. https:// www.filosofiadeldebito.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1988_Bataille-The-AccursedShare_Essay-on-General-Economy.pdf.

2. Haruki Murakami. Norwegian Wood. Edited by Vintage. New York, 2000.

3. Ai Weiwei. Ai Weiwei: Works, Beijing 1993–2003. Hong Kong, 2003. https://www. guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/ai-weiwei.

4. Herbert Molderings and John Brogden. Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance : Art as Experiment. Columbia University Press, 2010. https://books.google.es/ books?id=LfWgoQhpzRUC&pg=PT25&lpg 5. Deborah Elizabeth Cluff. 2018. Shame and the Making of Art : A Depth Psychological Perspective. New York: Routledge. https://books.google.es/ books?id=UiBBDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT58&lpg 6. Jonathan Jones. “Reinventing the Wheel.” The guardian, 2008. https://www.theguardian. com/books/2008/feb/09/art.

7. Pamela M. Lee and Gordon Matta-Clark. Object to Be Destroyed : The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, 2000. https://discovery.upc.edu/iii/encore/ record/C__Rb1295994?lang=cat&suite=def.

8. G W F Hegel. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1991. http://www.cambridge.org.

9. Sadie Plant. The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge, 1992. https://monoskop.org/images/2/24/Plant_Sadie_The_Most_ Radical_Gesture_The_Situationist_International_in_a_Postmodern_Age.pdf.

10. Henry David Thoreau. Walden, or, Life in the Woods. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004.

11. Alberto Oderiz. “Una Caida Con Significado.” Arquine, 2019. https://www.arquine.com/ una-caida-con-significado/.

12 . Pia Hoy and John Irons. “Etant Donnes: The Deconstructed Painting.” Tout-fait, 2000. https://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/Articles/Hoy/etantdon_en.html.

13 . Dalia Judovitz and Marcel Duchamp. Drawing on Art : Duchamp and Company.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

14. Tate. “Gustav Metzger – Auto-Destructive Art.” Tate Shots, 2015. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=5ioYs20rnL8&list=PLlQkkhA9rFRUlHQmz3Tyw8DlJh9wZttlR&index=23.

15 . Guy Debord. La Societe Du Spectacle / Guy Debord. Paris : Gallimard, 1992. https:// discovery.upc.edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1199791__Sguy Debord __Orightresult__U__ X4?lang=cat.

16. Henri Lefebvre. The Right to the City. Cornwall: T.J. Press Ltd, 1991. p147-159 17. Georges Bataille , and Michael Richardson. Georges Bataille: Essential Writings. California: Sage Publications Ltd, 1998. https://books.google.es/ books?id=CiNkNYhCzpEC&pg=PA37&lpg 18. Brian James Schumacher. “Potential of the City : The Interventions of The Situationist International and Gordon Matta-Clark.”

19. Ibid.

20. Diego Rivera. My Art, My Life : An Autobiography. New York: Dover Publications, 1991.

21. Ibid.

22. Brian James Schumacher. “Potential of the City : The Interventions of The Situationist International and Gordon Matta-Clark.” University of California, 2008. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/27c840nz.

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23. Jillian Steinhauer. “How Gordon Matta-Clark Saw the City.” | The New Republic, 2018. https://newrepublic.com/article/146929/gordon-matta-clark-saw-city.

24. Pamela M. Lee and Gordon Matta-Clark. 2000. Object to Be Destroyed : The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark. p153 25. William Kherbek. “Discursive Intersects: Politics and Space in the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark.” Samizdat Online, 2018. http://www.samizdatonline.ro/discursive-intersects-politicsspace-work-gordon-matta-clark/.

26. Brian James Schumacher. “Potential of the City : The Interventions of The Situationist International and Gordon Matta-Clark.” p 37 27. Cristina Guadalupe Galvan. “Matta-Clark: Anarchy and Architecture | DAMN° Magazine.”

Damn Magazine, 2017. https://www.damnmagazine.net/2017/11/24/matta-clark-anarchy-andarchitecture/.

28. Henri Lefebvre. The Right to the City. p147-159 29. Alastair Sooke. “The Man Who Destroyed All His Belongings.” BBC, 2016. http://www. bbc.com/culture/story/20160713-michael-landy-the-man-who-destroyed-all-his-belongings.

30. Ibid.

31. Henri Lefebvre. The Right to the City. Cornwall: T.J. Press Ltd, 1991.

32. Gordon Matta-Clark, Jane. Crawford, Gwendolyn. Owens, and Maria Berrios. Gordon Matta-Clark: Art Cards. Sangria, 2014.

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NOTES: CARVED IN STONE 1. Encyclopedia Britannica. “Mimesis | Art.” (Britannica, 2013) 2. Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005.

3.The art assignment PBS. “The Case for Land Art.” PBS Digital Studios, 2017. https://www.youtube. com/ 4. Robert Smithson. “Cultural Confinement.” Art Forum, 1972. https://contempoart.files.wordpress. com/2011/08/smithson-cultural-confinement.pdf.

5. David Ebony. “Illuminating the Void.” Yale University Press, 2018. http://blog.yalebooks. com/2018/04/03/illuminating-the-void-gordon-matta-clarks-urban-interventions/.

6. Cristina Guadalupe Galvan. “Matta-Clark: Anarchy and Architecture | DAMN° Magazine.” Damn Magazine, 2017. https://www.damnmagazine.net/2017/11/24/matta-clark-anarchy-and-architecture/.

7. Laura Feinstein. “New York Needs Gordon Matta-Clark Now More Than Ever.” CityLab, 2018. https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/02/new-york-needs-gordon-matta-clark-now-more-than-ever/553814/.

8. Pamela M. Lee and Gordon Matta-Clark. Object to Be Destroyed : The Work of Gordon MattaClark. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, 2000. https://discovery.upc.edu/iii/encore/record/C__ Rb1295994?lang=cat&suite=def.

9. Smith, Gary. Benjamin : Philosophy, Aesthetics, History. Chicago ;;London: University of Chicago Press, 1989. https://www.worldcat.org/title/benjamin-philosophy-history-aesthetics/oclc/463565313.

10. Ebony, David. “Illuminating the Void.”

11. Lucio Fontana. “Going Forth By Day.” art and electronic Media, 1946. http://artelectronicmedia. com/artwork/going-forth-by-day.

12. Lucio Fontana. “Lucio Fontana.” The art story, 1957. https://www.theartstory.org/artist-fontanalucio.htm.

13. Nicholas Wroe. “Rachel Whiteread: A Life in Art.” The Guardian, 2013. https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2013/apr/06/rachel-whiteread-life-in-art.

14. Rosie Tomkins. “The ‘useless’ Work of Anish Kapoor.” CNN, 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/ WORLD/europe/05/17/anish.kapoor.interview/index.html.

15. Walter De Maria. “Walter De Maria: Idea to Action to Object.” Gagosian, 1971. https://gagosian. com/exhibitions/2019/walter-de-maria-idea-to-action-to-object/.

16. Ai Weiwei. “Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’” Spiegel Online, 2011. https://www.spiegel.de/international/ world/ai-weiwei-shame-on-me-a-799302.html. watch?v=STW0eZDsKVg&list=PLlQkkhA9rFRUlHQmz3Tyw8DlJh9wZttlR&index=51&t=49s.

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NOTES: ERASING THE WALL 1. Georg Simmel. Bridge and Door. (Theory, Culture & Society, 1994).

2. Ibid.

3. Neil Leach. Rethinking Architecture. (New York: Routledge. 1997.) 173-196 4. Duncan Patterson ‘There’s Glass between Us’: A Critical Examination of ‘the Window’ in Art and Architecture from Ancient Greece to the Present Day.” (FORUM Ejournal. 2011) 5. Georg Simmel. Bridge and Door.

6. Marcel Proust. En Busca Del Tiempo Perdido. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial. 1986) 7. Hristina Krstic, Annalisa Trentin, and Goran Jovanovic. “interior-exterior connection in architectural design based on the incorporation of spatial in between layers. study of four architectural projects.”

Spatium, no. 36 (2016) 84–91.

8. Duncan Patterson A Critical Examination of ‘the Window’ in Art and Architecture from Ancient Greece to the Present Day.” 9. Charles Baudelaire. Paris Spleen. (New York: New Directions Pub. Co. 1988) 10. Houellebecq, Michel. The Map and the Territory. (New York: A. Knopf. 2012) 11. Jorn, James McBride, and Daniel Kehlmann “3 Writers on a Riverbed by Olafur Eliasson.”

(YouTube. 2014) 12. Ibid.

13. Komal Sharma. Houses without Windows: Meditative Respites or Architectural Straightjackets?

(Metropolis. 2014.)

14. Juhani Pallasmaa. Los Ojos de La Piel (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2014) 15. Marcel Proust. En Busca Del Tiempo Perdido.

16. Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories. (New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1918) 17. Georg Simmel. Bridge and Door 18 . Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ingvild Burkey, and Lars Lerin Winter. (New York: Penguin Press. 2015)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bataille, Georges. 1988. The Accursed Share’. Edited by ZONE BOOKS. New York. https://www. filosofiadeldebito.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1988_Bataille-The-Accursed-Share_Essay-onGeneral-Economy.pdf.

Bataille, Georges, and Michael Richardson. 1998. Georges Bataille: Essential Writings. California: Sage Publications Ltd. https://books.google.es/ books?id=CiNkNYhCzpEC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen. New York: New Directions Pub. Co. 1988 Cluff, Deborah Elizabeth. Shame and the Making of Art : A Depth Psychological Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2018. https://books.google.es/books?id=UiBBDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT58&lpg Debord, Guy. 1992. La Societe Du Spectacle / Guy Debord. Paris : Gallimard,. https://discovery.upc. edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1199791__Sguy Debord __Orightresult__U__X4?lang=cat.

Rivera, Diego. 1991. My Art, My Life : An Autobiography. New York: Dover Publications.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. White Nights and Other Stories. New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1918 Ebony, David. 2018. “Illuminating the Void.” Yale University Press. 2018. http://blog.yalebooks. com/2018/04/03/illuminating-the-void-gordon-matta-clarks-urban-interventions/.

Encyclopedia Britannica. 2013. “Mimesis | Art.” Britannica. 2013. https://www.britannica.com/art/ mimesis.

Feinstein, Laura. 2018. “New York Needs Gordon Matta-Clark Now More Than Ever.” CityLab. 2018. https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/02/new-york-needs-gordon-matta-clark-now-more-than-ever/553814/.

Fontana, Lucio. 1946. “Going Forth By Day.” Art and Electronic Media. 1946. http:// artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/going-forth-by-day.

Fontana, Lucio. 1957. “Lucio Fontana.” The Art Story. 1957. https://www.theartstory.org/artistfontana-lucio.htm.

Guadalupe Galvan, Cristina. 2017. “Matta-Clark: Anarchy and Architecture | DAMN° Magazine.”

Damn Magazine, 2017. https://www.damnmagazine.net/2017/11/24/matta-clark-anarchy-and-architecture/.

Hegel, G W F. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press . http://www.cambridge.org.

Houellebecq, Michel. The Map and the Territory. New York: A. Knopf. 2012 Hoy, Pia, and John Irons. 2000. “Etant Donnes: The Deconstructed Painting.” Tout-Fait. 2000. https:// www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_3/Articles/Hoy/etantdon_en.html.

Jones, Jonathan. 2008. “Reinventing the Wheel.” The Guardian. 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/ books/2008/feb/09/art.

Jorn, James McBride, and Daniel Kehlmann “3 Writers on a Riverbed by Olafur Eliasson.” YouTube.

Video File. October 01, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOLUpX7ZCLI&t=27s.

Judovitz, Dalia, and Marcel Duchamp. 2010. Drawing on Art : Duchamp and Company. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kherbek, William. 2018. “Discursive Intersects: Politics and Space in the Work of Gordon MattaClark.” Samizdat Online. 2018. http://www.samizdatonline.ro/discursive-intersects-politics-space-workgordon-matta-clark/.

Kim, Angela. 2008. “Waterfalls Along the East River.” Weekend America. 2008. https://web.archive. org/web/20110928131808/http://weekendamerica.publicradio. org/display/web/2008/06/26/waterfall_nyc/.

Knausgaard, Karl Ove, Ingvild Burkey, and Lars Lerin. 2015. Winter. New York: Penguin Press.

Krstic, Hristina, Annalisa Trentin, and Goran Jovanovic. 2016. “interior-exterior connection in architectural design based on the incorporation of spatial in between layers. study of four architectural projects.” Spatium, no. 36: 84–91. https://doi.org/10.2298/SPAT1636084K. Leach, Neil. 1997. Rethinking Architecture. New York: Routledge. http://ateneum.edu.pl/ assets/Dziekanat/ELEARNING/jERZAK/Leach-ed-Rethinking-Architecture.pdf.

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Lee, Pamela M., and Gordon Matta-Clark. 2000. Object to Be Destroyed : The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press. https://discovery.upc.edu/iii/encore/ record/C__Rb1295994?lang=cat&suite=def.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Right to the City. Cornwall: T.J. Press Ltd. Locke, Maryel., Charles Warren, Jean-Luc Godard, and Anne-Marie. Mieville. 1993. JeanLuc Godard’s Hail Mary : Women and the Sacred in Film. Southern Illinois University Press. https://books.google.es/books?id=hUZwnxlEgzUC&pg=.

Maria, Walter De. 1971. “Walter De Maria: Idea to Action to Object.” Gagosian. 1971. https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2019/walter-de-maria-idea-to-action-to-object/.

Matta-Clark, Gordon, Jane. Crawford, Gwendolyn. Owens, and Maria Berrios. 2014. Gordon Matta-Clark: Art Cards. Sangria.

Molderings, Herbert, and John (Translator) Brogden. 2010. Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance: Art as Experiment. Columbia University Press. https://books.google.es/ books?id=LfWgoQhpzRUC&pg=PT25&lpg=PT25&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Murakami, Haruki. 2000. Norwegian Wood. Edited by Vintage. New York.

Odiriz, Alberto. 2019. “Una Caida Con Significado.” Arquine. 2019. https://www.arquine. com/una-caida-con-significado/.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2014. Los Ojos de La Piel Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, https://discovery. upc.edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1463641__Spallasmaa__Orightresult__U__X4?lang=cat.

Patterson, Duncan P R. 2011. A Critical Examination of ‘the Window’ in Art and Architecture from Ancient Greece to the Present Day.” FORUM Ejournal. Vol. 10.

Plant, Sadie. 1992. The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge. https://monoskop.org/images/2/24/Plant_Sadie_The_Most_Radical_ Gesture_The_Situationist_International_in_a_Postmodern_Age.pdf.

Proust, Marcel. 1986. En Busca Del Tiempo Perdido. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. https:// discovery.upc.edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1095616__Sproust Ff:facetmediatype:a:a:Llibre::__ Orightresult__U__X4?lang=cat.

Schumacher, Brian James. 2008. “Potential of the City : The Interventions of The Situationist International and Gordon Matta-Clark.” University of California. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/27c840nz.

Sharma, Komal. 2014. “Houses without Windows: Meditative Respites or Architectural Straightjackets? - Metropolis.” Metropolis. 2014. https://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/ residential-architecture/houses-without-windows-meditative-respites-or-architecturalstraightjackets/.

Simmel, Georg. 1994. “Bridge and Door.” Theory, Culture & Society 11 (1): 5–10. https:// doi.org/10.1177/026327694011001002.

Smith, Gary. 1989. Benjamin : Philosophy, Aesthetics, History. Chicago ;;London: University of Chicago Press. https://www.worldcat.org/title/benjamin-philosophy-history-aesthetics/ oclc/463565313.

Smithson, Robert. 1972. “Cultural Confinement.” Art Forum. https://contempoart.files. wordpress.com/2011/08/smithson-cultural-confinement.pdf.

Sooke, Alastair. 2016. “The Man Who Destroyed All His Belongings.” BBC. 2016. http://www. bbc.com/culture/story/20160713-michael-landy-the-man-who-destroyed-all-his-belongings.

Steinhauer, Jillian. 2018. “How Gordon Matta-Clark Saw the City.” | The New Republic.

2018. https://newrepublic.com/article/146929/gordon-matta-clark-saw-city.

Tate. 2015. “Gustav Metzger – Auto-Destructive Art.” Tate Shots. 2015. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=5ioYs20rnL8&list=PLlQkkhA9rFRUlHQmz3Tyw8DlJh9wZttlR&index=23.

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Thoreau, Henry David. 2004. Walden, or, Life in the Woods. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

The art assignment PBS. 2017. “The Case for Land Art.” PBS Digital Studios. 2017. https:// www.youtube.com/ Tomkins, Rosie. 2010. “The ‘useless’ Work of Anish Kapoor.” CNN. 2010. http://edition.cnn. com/2010/WORLD/europe/05/17/anish.kapoor.interview/index.html.

Trotsky, Leon. 2005. Literature and Revolution. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Weiwei, Ai. 2003. Ai Weiwei: Works, Beijing 1993–2003. Hong Kong. https://www. guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/ai-weiwei.

Weiwei, Ai. 2011. 2011 “Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’” Spiegel Online. https://www.spiegel.de/ international/world/ai-weiwei-shame-on-me-a-799302.html.

Wroe, Nicholas. 2013. “Rachel Whiteread: A Life in Art.” The Guardian. 2013. https://www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/06/rachel-whiteread-life-in-art. watch?v=STW0eZDsKVg&list=PLlQkkhA9rFRUlHQmz3Tyw8DlJh9wZttlR&index=51&t=49s.

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LIST OF IMAGES Introduction Fig 1. Obrey, Matt. “The Street Photographs.” Accessed June 16, 2019. https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2012/10/25/ capturing-the-simplicity-in-chaos-the-street-photographsof-matt-obrey-from-the-uk/.

Fig 2. Sundstrom, Anna. “Building No. 8 Skalso Arkitekter.”

2011 Accessed April 9, 2019. https://www.archdaily. com/509444/buildning-no-8-skalso-arkitekter/537f41d5c07a 8021210002ed-buildning-no-8-skalso-arkitekter-photo.

Fig 3. Banksy. “Love Is in the Bin.” Sotheby’s, 2018. https:// www.sothebys.com/en/articles/latest-banksy-artwork-loveis-in-the-bin-created-live-at-auction.

Fig 4. Matta-Clark, Gordon. “Splitting.” Museo Reina Sofia, 1974. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/ artwork/splitting.

Fig 5. McQueen, Steve. “Deadpan.” Moma, 1997. https:// www.moma.org/collection/works/98724.

Fig 6. Map of Analco quarter of Puebla, Mexico, by author Fig 7. Map of historical center of Mexico City, by author Fig 8. Map of 10 Mayo quarter of Mexico City, by author Fig 9. Facade of Analco House, 2018, Google maps Fig 10. Analco market, 2018, Google maps Fig 11. Roe, Ken. “Cine Variedades I.” Cinema treasures.

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://cinematreasures.org/ theaters/33485.

Fig 12. Tourism Media. “Alameda Central in Mexico City,” 2016. https://www.expedia.com/Alameda-Central-MexicoCity.d507563.Vacation-Attraction.

Fig 13. INAH. “Fachada de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 14. INAH. “jardin de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 15. Breaking the wall, by author, based on :Substance, “Cracking the Case,” 2016. https://forum.substance3d.com/ index.php?topic=14417.0.

The act of Unbuilding Fig 16. Lewis, Michael. “Things,” 2018. https://www. michaellewisphotography.com/Things/3.

Fig 17. Weiwei, Ai. “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.” guggenheim, 1995. https://www.guggenheim.org/artscurriculum/topic/ai-weiwei.

Fig 18. Duchamp, Marcel. “Bottle Rack.” Moma, 1914. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/ marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/.

Fig 19. Duchamp, Marcel. “Bicycle Wheel.” Moma, 1913. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/ marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/.

Fig 20. Duchamp, Marcel. “In advance of a broken arm.”

Moma, 1915. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/ themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade/.

Fig 21. Toigo, Linda. “Medieval and Modern History,” 2013. http://www.lindatoigo.com/portfolio/medieval-and-modernhistory/.

Fig 22. Duchamp, Marcel. “etant Donnes.” Toutfait, 1966. https://www.toutfait.com/marcel-duchamp-atant-donnas-

the-deconstructed-painting/.

Fig 23. Wilson, Richard, and Jim Dyson. “Turning the Place Over.” Apollo, 2007. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/ has-liverpool-squandered-the-legacy-of-its-year-as-city-ofculture/.

Fig 24. Metzger, Gustav. “Nylon Sheet Being Dissolved in Acid,” 1960. https://www.ft.com/content/262010cc-04ea11e7-aa5b-6bb07f5c8e12.

Fig 25. Rauschenberg, Robert. “Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 · SFMOMA.” SFMoma, 1953. https://www.sfmoma.org/ artwork/98.298/.

Fig 26. Debord, Guy. “Society of the Spectacle.” Black & Red, 1967.

Fig 27. Situationist International. “Je Participe,” 1968. https:// uptheossroad.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/beauty-is-in-thestreets/.

Fig 28. Sundstrom, Anna. “Building No. 8 Skalso Arkitekter.”

Accessed April 9, 2019. https://www.archdaily.com/509444/ buildning-no-8-skalso-arkitekter/537f41d5c07a8021210002 ed-buildning-no-8-skalso-arkitekter-photo.

Fig 29. Matta-clark, Gordon. “Anarchitecture Available.” Tate.

Tate, 1974. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/07/towards-anarchitecture-gordon-matta-clarkand-le-corbusier.

Fig 30. Rivera, Diego. “Sueno de Una Tarde Dominical En La Alameda Central,” 1947. http://www.cambiodemichoacan. com.mx/columna-nc49820.

Fig 31. Alcocer, Carlos. “Alameda Central,” 2017. https:// fineartamerica.com/featured/alameda-central-carlosalcocer-c13studio.html.

Fig 32. Matta-Clark, Gordon. “Splitting.” Moma, 1974. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/50871.

Fig 33. Matta-Clark, Gordon. “Conical Intersect.” SFMOMA, 1975. https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/92.426/.

Fig 34. CTMconstruccion. “A Destroyed Building in Mexico City.” Here Magazine, 2017. https://www.heremagazine. com/articles/mexico-city-tourism-earthquake.

Fig 35. Matta Clark, Gordon. “Building Cuts.” ArchDaily , 1974. https://www.archdaily.com.br/br/01-27310/artee-arquitetura-building-cuts-gordon-matta-clark?ad_ medium=gallery.

Fig 36.

Landy, Michael.

“Break Down,” 2001. http://1215today.com/features/michael-landy-break-down/.

Fig 37. Prouvost, Laure. “Deep See Blue Surrounding You/Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre,” 2019. https://www. artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-venice-biennales-10-bestpavilions.

Fig 38. Gupta, Shilpa. “Untitled (Mechanical Residential Gate Swinging Back and Forth Breaking the Wall),” 2019. https://www.designboom.com/art/shilpa-gupta-metal-gatevenice-art-biennale-05-12-2019/.

Fig 39, 41,42. Montiel, Rozana. “Stand Ground,” 2018. http:// rozanamontiel.com/en/investigaciones/stand-ground-2/.

Fig 40. Stand ground concept diagram, by author

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Project I. Fig 43. Facade of Analco House, 2018, Google maps Fig 44. Analco market, 2018, Google maps Fig 45. Map of Analco quarter of Puebla, Mexico, by author Fig 46. Plan of Analco house and market, by author Fig 47. Facade of Analco House, 2018, Google maps Fig 48,49. Facade and section of analco house, by author Fig 50. Photocollage, possible openings on facade in analco house (Facade of Analco House, 2018, Google maps), by author Fig 51. Concept schemes, Analco House, by author Fig 52. Modified plan of Analco house and market, by author Fig 53. Photocollage, facade in analco house, by author Fig 54,55. Facade and section of analco house proposal, by author Fig 56,57. Exploded isometric diagram of analco house, by author.

Fig 58. Photocollage, unbuilding a portrait, by author

Carved in stone: Fig 59. Kapoor, Anish. “Oracle.” Kukje Gallery, 2002. https://www.kukjegallery.com/KJ_exhibitions_view_2. php?page=&a_no=200&v=2&w_no=1&aw_no=1901&ex_ no=58.

Fig 60. Goya, Francisco. “The Meadow of San Isidro.” Museo Nacional del Prado, 1788. https://www.museodelprado. es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-meadow-of-sanisidro/290d61bb-59ac-49e5-a63f-390eb5bdde46.

Fig 61. Goya, Francisco. “The Pilgrimage to San Isidro.” Museo Nacional del Prado, 1823. https://www.museodelprado. es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-pilgrimage-to-san-isidro/ d6d92063-15a9-4cfb-a7be-3576a2f8b87e.

Fig 62. lian hangzhuan. “Vineyard Support Stake,” 2018. https://lianhangzhuangshi.en.made-in-china.com/product/ ljPJNqrGhfVX/China-Vineyard-Support-Stake-CorrosionResistance-FRP-Pole-Rod.html.

Fig 63. Heizer, Michael. “Double Negative.” at length, 1969. http://atlengthmag.com/art/somewhere-on-the-road-tonowhere-double-negative/.

Fig 64. Frankish, Daren. “Stonehenge Black White.” Saatchi Art, 2016. https://www.saatchiart.com/print/PhotographyStonehenge-Black-White/554579/3220954/view.

Fig 65. Oppenhein, Dennis. “Beebe Lake Ice Cut,” 1969. http://ludwig-mies-vanderrohe.blogspot.com/2011/07/ gordon-matta-clark.html.

Fig 66. Salcedo, Doris. “Shibbboleth.” artnet, 2007. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/doris-salcedo-mcachicago-292113.

Fig 67. Pena, Nick. “Untitled,” 2005. http://resizeme.club/ picresize-167_11167.html.

Fig 68. Matta-Clark, Gordon. “Conical Intersect.” SFMOMA, 1975. https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/92.426/.

Fig 69. Matta-Clark, Gordon. “Splitting.” Moma, 1974. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/50871.

Fig 70. Fontana, Lucio. “Spatial Concept: Expectations,” 1965. https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/lucio-fontana1899-1968-concetto-spaziale-attesa-5890001-details.aspx.

Fig 71. Whiteread, Rachel. “House Study.” Tate, 1992. https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/processdrawing-writing-diary-its-nice-way-thinking-about-timepassing.

Fig 72. Maria, Walter De. “Olympic Mountain Project.”

Archives of American Art Journal. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, October 15, 1972. https://doi. org/10.1086/aaa.52.3_4.43155518.

Fig 73. Dahlberg, Jonas. “Memory Wound,” 2011. https:// www.dezeen.com/2016/09/21/norway-government-scrapsplans-controversial-utoya-memorial-memory-wound-jonasdahlberg/.

Fig 74. Notre dame cut, by author with: Notre dame aerial view, Google Maps Fig 75. Notre dame cut, by author with: Cellcode. “Dame Satellite Cathedral View Notre Paris.” Accessed June 21, 2019. https://cellcode.us/quotes/dame-satellite-cathedralview-notre-paris.html.

Fig 76,78. Atelier Lyon, RAAAF. “Bunker 599.” Archdaily, 2010. https://www.archdaily.com/256984/bunker-599rietveld-landscape?ad_medium=gallery.

Fig 77. Bunker concept diagram, by author

Project II: Fig 79. Roe, Ken. “Cine Variedades I.” Cinema treasures.

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://cinematreasures.org/ theaters/33485.

Fig 80. Tourism Media. “Alameda Central in Mexico City,” 2016. https://www.expedia.com/Alameda-Central-MexicoCity.d507563.Vacation-Attraction.

Fig 81. Map of historical center of Mexico City, by author Fig 82. Plan of Cinema Variedades, by author Fig 83-84. Halvam. “Los Cines de La Ciudad,” 2010. https:// www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=71282141.

Fig 85. Roe, Ken. “Cine Variedades I.” Cinema treasures.

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://cinematreasures.org/ theaters/33485.

Fig 86-87. Facade and section of cinema variedades, by author Fig 88. Photocollage, possible openings on facade in cinema variedades, by author (based on image of cinema variedades, 2018, google maps) Fig 89. Concept schemes, cinema variedades, by author Fig 90. Modified plan of Cinema variedades, by author Fig 91. Photocollage, facade in Cinema Variedades, by author Fig 92. Facade and section of Cinema Variedades proposal, by author Fig 93-94. Exploded isometric diagram of Cinema Variedades, by author.

Fig 95. Photocollage, unbuilding a portrait II, by author

Erasing the wall: Fig 96. Hopper, Edward. “Sunlight in a Cafeteria,” 1958. https://www.edwardhopper.net/sunlight-in-a-cafeteria.jsp.

Fig 97. MXCity. “Fachadas Del Centro Historico.” MXCity, 2016. https://mxcity.mx/2018/12/asombrosas-esculturas-enlas-paredes-y-fachadas-del-centro-historico/.

Fig 98. Chinneck, Alex. “World Revealed,” 2019. https:// www.designboom.com/art/alex-chinneck-world-revealedzip-facade-milan-design-week-04-08-2019/.

Fig 99. Evo Anthro. “Vidija Cave,” 2017. https://www.bbc. com/news/science-environment-39747326.

Fig 100. Lagui. “Ancient Wall,” 2005. https://www. canstockphoto.com/ancient-wall-with-window-0670402. html.

There is a wall between us

Fig 101. Dubai Travel. “Inside Sainte Chapelle,” 2010. https:// dubaitravelblog.com/sainte-chapelle-paris/.

Fig 102. Luis Barragan. “Casa Barragan.” Archdaily. Mexico City, 1948. https://www.archdaily.com/102599/ad-classicscasa-barragan-luis-barragan?ad_medium=gallery.

Fig 103. Corbusie, Le. “Villa Savoye,” 1929. https:// villasavoye.weebly.com/the-building.html.

Fig 104. Johnson, Philip. “Glass House,” 1949. https://www. modernistcollection.com/blog/2019/1/14/kanopy-onlinestreaming-design-documentaries.

Fig 105. Godard, Jean-Luc. Vivre Sa Vie. Pantheon Distribution, 1962.

Fig 106. Coppola, Sofia. Lost in Translation. Focus Features, 2003.

Fig 107. Weiner, Matthew. Mad Men. AMC, Lionsgate Television, 2007.

Fig 108. Trier, Lars Von. Antichrist. Zentropa Entertainments, 2009.

Fig 109. Burton, Tim. Planet of the Apes. Twentieth Century Fox, 2001.

Fig 110. Peele, Jordan. Us. Monkeypaw Productions, 2019.

Fig 111. Edwards, Blake. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. JurowShepherd, 1961.

Fig 112. Gondry, Michel. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Focus Features, 2004.

Fig 113. Hitchcock, Alfred. Rear Window. Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, 1954.

Fig 114. Bergman, Ingmar. Fanny and Alexander.

Cinematograph AB, 1982.

Fig 115. Crane, David. Friends. Warner Bros, 1994.

Fig 116. Star, Darren. Sex and the City. Darren Star Productions, 1998.

Fig 117. Ansel Agrons, Geoffrey. “Rapprochement,” 2017. https://www.riseart.com/article/2017-01-09-allure-of-theabandoned.

Fig 118. Baracco+Wright Architects, and Linda Tegg.

“Repair: Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” 2018. https://architectureau.com/articles/environment-habitatand-cultural-history-repair/.

Fig 119. Eliasson, Olafur. “Riverbed.” Archdaily, 2014. https://www.archdaily.com/540338/olafur-eliasson-createsan-indoor-riverbed-at-danish-museum?ad_medium=gallery.

Fig 120-121. Atelier FCJZ. “Vertical Glass House.” Dezeen, 2014. https://www.dezeen.com/2014/01/27/vertical-glasshouse-by-atelier-fcjz/.

Fig 122. Terradas Arquitectes. “Barcelona Maritime Museum,” 2013. https://www.archilovers.com/projects/184179/ barcelona-maritime-museum.html.

Fig 123. Concept diagram Barcelona Maritime Museum, by author Fig 124-125. Barcelona Maritime Museum facade, google maps, 2008-2018 Fig 126-127. Baldessari, John. “Baldessari Does Mies,” 2009. http://blogs.lavozdegalicia.es/javierarmesto/tag/ baldessari/.

Fig 128. Aballi, Ignasi. “A Possible Landscape,” 2017. http:// despacio.cr/en/event/landscape.

Fig 129. shutterstock. “Sky Views.” shutterstock. Accessed June 21, 2019. https://www.shutterstock.com/es/search/ blue+sky+background.

Fig 130. Studio Olafur Eliasson. “Window Projection,” 1990. https://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK101840/ window-projection.

Fig 131. Obrey, Matt. “The Street Photographs.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. https://erickimphotography.com/ blog/2012/10/25/capturing-the-simplicity-in-chaos-thestreet-photographs-of-matt-obrey-from-the-uk/.

Fig 132. LAUsNOTEbook. “Palazzo Pucci,” 2016. https://lau. blogspot.com/2016/06/altana-palazzo-pucci-florence-1971gae.html.

Fig 133. Plotnick, Rebecca. “Paris Window at Dusk.”

Accessed June 22, 2019. https://rebeccaplotnick.com/ products/paris-window-at-dusk?pp=1.

Fig 134. Greenland, Matt. “Frame in a Frame,” 2018. http:// www.mattgreenland.work/projects/2018/5/8/cyclical-pt10windows-reflections-illusion.

Fig 135. MINA. “Deskgram,” 2017. https://deskgram. net/p/1637140591312941011_626532587.

Fig 136. Emlak, Firsat. “Youwillknovv,” 2016.

Fig 137. Stemple, Rob. “Stemple.” Accessed June 22, 2019. http://picssr.com/photos/26881907@N05/ interesting?nsid=26881907@N05 Fig 138. “The View from Here.” The telegraph, 2015. https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/galleries/The-View-from-Heremoving-photos-taken-from-windows-around-the-world/winuglasgow-day/.

Fig 139-141. Kronental, Laurent. “Les Yeux Des Tours,” 2018. https://www.collater.al/en/les-yeux-des-tours-laurentkronental/.

Fig 142. Stylist. “View from My Window:,” 2016. https://www. stylist.co.uk/travel/view-from-my-window-photographersfrom-around-the-world-share-viewpoints-of-their-city/5030.

Project III: Fig 143. INAH. “Fachada de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 144. INAH. “jardin de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 145. Map of 10 Mayo quarter of Mexico City, by author Fig 146. Plan of San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 147. INAH. “Fachada de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 148-149. Facade and section of San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 150. Photocollage, possible openings on facade in San Lazaro Church, by author (based on image of San Lazaro church, 2018, google maps) Fig 151. Concept schemes, San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 152. Modified plan of San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 153. Photocollage, facade in San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 154-155. Facade and section of San Lazaro Church proposal, by author Fig 156. INAH. “Fachada de Ex Templo de San Lazaro.”

Accessed June 16, 2019. http://vamonosalbable.blogspot. com/2019/02/.

Fig 157. Photocollage, facade in San Lazaro Church, by author Fig 158-159. Exploded isometric diagram of San Lazaro Church, by author.

Fig 160. Photocollage, unbuilding a portrait III, by author

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