The present situation that our society and our profession are suffering made me reflect and ask myself what I should talk about in this entry.
We live in a consumer society that spends beyond its means and therefore causes the exploitation and a decrease of our environmental resources. People seem to live in the motto: “The newest is the most attractive, no matter where it comes from”. In response to all of this, new lines of thought and new concepts against this lifestyle are originating increasingly, such as “unconsume”, “unbuy”...
It is not different in architecture. We can see more projects that are "overly concerned" (sometimes this worry is unreal) of environment and sustainability. Renovations have become attractive (relative to new construction) including sustainable development of new materials and new recycling procedures.
At this moment the question is generated: what could we do or what do the things that we won´t use anymore offer us? Now everything is thrown away, nothing is repaired.
Well, there are many people working on this in different areas related to architecture, such as art. Todd McLellan shows us through his pictures how deconstruction can become art.
In architecture we find very interesting works, such as Marjan Teeuwen´s projects. Her work is based in construction and destruction, and the notion of "architecture as sculpture", which is borrowed from the artist Gordon Matta Clark by his research into deconstruction.
Architectural interventions that combine balance between aesthetic and anti-aesthetic. Teeuwen breaks the walls, floors, ceilings, connecting the spaces and allowing special visual effects and lighting to stage her pieces. Is this not in many projects what architecture consist of? In many of them, the formal gesture is to build a void, to make the negative of the preexistence.
