In the same vein as Jane Jacobs' "cities will be mines of the future," can people think of buildings that have acted as material mines/quarries? I'm most interested in buildings that have been stripped of some, but not all of their materials, leaving a kind of "naked" structure in its place.
The Colosseum is perhaps one of the best known examples. Marble and stone was stripped to help build other structures, the iron clamps supporting the marble was melted down for weaponry, etc. It was also used as a kind of squatter village.
And then there are current examples of foreclosed former-home-owners stripping cabinets from their foreclosed properties, etc. But I'm looking for slightly less suburban, slightly more architectural examples.
the barcelona pavilion was slowly dismantled. at one point, all that stood was the steel structure. eventually, the steel was sold. the foundation remained but was covered by a garden. fragments of the onyx were used as tabletops.
"we know that the german authorities were negotiating with a barcelona businessman who was interested in turning the building into a restaurant. for some reason, no agreement was reached, possibly because the entrepreneur wanted to rent the building while the germans were only interested in selling it. in the end, it was decided to dismantle the construction. the company that had supplied the marble, köstner und gottschalk, took charge of it for possible reuse. the chromed steel structures were also sent back to berlin for a possible reutilization or resale, to help offset the deficit created by the pavilion. the steel structure was sold off for scrap in barcelona, and was almost certainly the only part of the building to remain-but now unrecognizable-in the city. the unobtrusive foundations were covered over by a modest garden, planted with palm trees, which must have been laid out after the civil war, and remained that way for more than fifty years. a small piece of the onyx did service as a table top in dr ruegenbergs' home in berlin; in mies' apartment in chicago, the metal structure from one of the ottoman stools supported a slab of marble to provide an occasional table. philip c. johnson, the first american admirer of the work of mies van der rohe, managed to acquire one of the armchairs to enrich his collection of 20th century art."
have to ask - why do you ask?
Just interested or as background for some project?
--
Anyway, many of the examples that spring to my mind when reading the words "building as quarry" are occasions when buildings have been used as mines for ideas - roman ruins for Piranesi - the greek temples, whitewashed by time, for the early modernists, and the like.
When understood literally, meaning taking parts of old buildings and using them anew, "the building as quarry" often boils down to a place for scavenging, stuff like copper or other metals that can be resold.
For many architects, "the building as quarry" means "the old building as a place to get old-looking bricks from" - which inself is a bit more interesting - because the implied idea, that new bricks have to mature somewhere before they get the patina that is so aesthetically pleasing - and then they can be harvested for "proper" use.
Eventhough its infrastructure-to-building, rather than building-to-building.
--
The "naked structure" is something that most architects fetishize - the moment in construction before all the filler and stuff is installed, when the building is supposedly still raw and honest. The same with the ruin - the "soft tissue" deteriorates, is stripped, falls away, and the "pure" skeletal form is again on display. The illustration of Soanes Bank of England is maybe the most famous example.
I have no idea what the value in this is - there is obviously an aethetic pleasure to it - but architectural value or value of some other kind?
you already mentioned the colosseum, but the book linked below describes the 'mining' and the reorganization of rome in the way you seem to be talking about. a lot about how the various popes and then mussolini used both the landmarks of rome AND its historic materials to add historic oomph to their own aspirations.
Helsinki, you bring up a few points that I've already been looking into. I'm currently working on my Masters thesis, and this is a bit of relevant research that has eluded me (it seems that, of course, there should be examples of this...though perhaps they haven't been documented). The patina of age on the salvaged bricks is an interesting point. And the fetishization of ruins (as well as the problem of ruin value) is something that hangs over a lot of my research. Soane and Gandy's Bank of England "rendering" was a jumpong off point for a good amount of my research, and in fact led me to program my project as a bank...a kind of bank of materials that can pay out later when the bank (but not the architecture) has become obsolete.
This thread reminded me of Milwaukee's Cream City Brick. The only way to get it anymore is to reclaim it from a demolished building. It's kind of a romatic notion, in a way.
(As a child, I associated Cream City Brick with the taste of cream soda. A confusion of the senses, or synesthesia, if you will.)
A bank of materials, where these materials would "mature" and become better or more valuable (like money in banks in the golden past...)? Sounds a bit like a material garden more than a storage - this can slip easily into a case of a strong framework and then "material" as independent, non-structural stuff. I think the example of the "Big Dig House" is quite nice in the way the reclaimed parts are structurally essential and not filler, or surface.
---
You could approach materials by using them in as pure a way as possible: re-use would then be up to the scavengers - purely one-material homogenous metal-parts could be melted and moulded easily anew, wood could be used in as robust and "supersized" way as possible to accomodate future refining into smaller units, and so forth...
---
The value of ruins is of course pretty problematic - it has so much to do with nostalgia and/or the values of the society in general. From english garden-ruins, the SITE big-box-stores, to the Twin Towers - ruins and their meaning could easily swallow your thesis.
Maybe a focus on materials, patina, re-use, and such would help to hold a thesis (and a project) together?
Helsinki, definitely. I have from the beginning adopted an almost dryly pragmatic approach to the project. Romantic notions of "ruin value" belong to the critic and not myself, as the designer. The thesis then is primarily focused on a physical/material transformation of the architecture to better accommodate future scenarios beyond growth (as in specific [or general] scenarios of decline).
What I'm looking for is some inspiration of how to integrate permanent parts of the architecture with more impermanent parts. Can the roof, shell, interior partitions, etc. deteriorate or be stripped off to reveal an embedded architecture that is in fact more "appropriate" to a future scenario (say post-peak oil, as one basic example). So, instead of large leasable area, one is left with smaller (heatable) spaces in, say, thick concrete (vaults, in a literal AND nonliteral sense), as well as an opening up of maybe more public spaces for future barter markets, etc.
The best example of this is probably still the Colosseum, but I'd love to see other precedents, or even some building technology that might facilitate a removal of materials from permanent aspects of a building (prefab? modular?).
Look at the other projects as well - the firm places a lot emphasis on interior/shell-situations as well as experiments with finishes and materials. They have many thoughtful projects that tackle building in built-up areas.
for an interesting take on this you might read Robert Smithson's essay "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic NJ". It describes this process in reverse, kind of the negentropic flip of the entropic coin, although Entropy and the passage of time play a large role in his work..on that you might read his essay on Central Park and FLO.
Building as Quarry
In the same vein as Jane Jacobs' "cities will be mines of the future," can people think of buildings that have acted as material mines/quarries? I'm most interested in buildings that have been stripped of some, but not all of their materials, leaving a kind of "naked" structure in its place.
The Colosseum is perhaps one of the best known examples. Marble and stone was stripped to help build other structures, the iron clamps supporting the marble was melted down for weaponry, etc. It was also used as a kind of squatter village.
And then there are current examples of foreclosed former-home-owners stripping cabinets from their foreclosed properties, etc. But I'm looking for slightly less suburban, slightly more architectural examples.
Anyone?
the barcelona pavilion was slowly dismantled. at one point, all that stood was the steel structure. eventually, the steel was sold. the foundation remained but was covered by a garden. fragments of the onyx were used as tabletops.
"we know that the german authorities were negotiating with a barcelona businessman who was interested in turning the building into a restaurant. for some reason, no agreement was reached, possibly because the entrepreneur wanted to rent the building while the germans were only interested in selling it. in the end, it was decided to dismantle the construction. the company that had supplied the marble, köstner und gottschalk, took charge of it for possible reuse. the chromed steel structures were also sent back to berlin for a possible reutilization or resale, to help offset the deficit created by the pavilion. the steel structure was sold off for scrap in barcelona, and was almost certainly the only part of the building to remain-but now unrecognizable-in the city. the unobtrusive foundations were covered over by a modest garden, planted with palm trees, which must have been laid out after the civil war, and remained that way for more than fifty years. a small piece of the onyx did service as a table top in dr ruegenbergs' home in berlin; in mies' apartment in chicago, the metal structure from one of the ottoman stools supported a slab of marble to provide an occasional table. philip c. johnson, the first american admirer of the work of mies van der rohe, managed to acquire one of the armchairs to enrich his collection of 20th century art."
have to ask - why do you ask?
Just interested or as background for some project?
--
Anyway, many of the examples that spring to my mind when reading the words "building as quarry" are occasions when buildings have been used as mines for ideas - roman ruins for Piranesi - the greek temples, whitewashed by time, for the early modernists, and the like.
When understood literally, meaning taking parts of old buildings and using them anew, "the building as quarry" often boils down to a place for scavenging, stuff like copper or other metals that can be resold.
For many architects, "the building as quarry" means "the old building as a place to get old-looking bricks from" - which inself is a bit more interesting - because the implied idea, that new bricks have to mature somewhere before they get the patina that is so aesthetically pleasing - and then they can be harvested for "proper" use.
--
An interesting case of re-use of material would be this:
http://www.ssdarchitecture.com/works/residential/big-dig-house/
Eventhough its infrastructure-to-building, rather than building-to-building.
--
The "naked structure" is something that most architects fetishize - the moment in construction before all the filler and stuff is installed, when the building is supposedly still raw and honest. The same with the ruin - the "soft tissue" deteriorates, is stripped, falls away, and the "pure" skeletal form is again on display. The illustration of Soanes Bank of England is maybe the most famous example.
I have no idea what the value in this is - there is obviously an aethetic pleasure to it - but architectural value or value of some other kind?
guiggster -
you already mentioned the colosseum, but the book linked below describes the 'mining' and the reorganization of rome in the way you seem to be talking about. a lot about how the various popes and then mussolini used both the landmarks of rome AND its historic materials to add historic oomph to their own aspirations.
http://www.amazon.com/Preserving-Worlds-Great-Cities-Destruction/dp/060980815X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255952583&sr=1-4
Great pyramids of Egypt.
Thanks for the comments thus far.
Helsinki, you bring up a few points that I've already been looking into. I'm currently working on my Masters thesis, and this is a bit of relevant research that has eluded me (it seems that, of course, there should be examples of this...though perhaps they haven't been documented). The patina of age on the salvaged bricks is an interesting point. And the fetishization of ruins (as well as the problem of ruin value) is something that hangs over a lot of my research. Soane and Gandy's Bank of England "rendering" was a jumpong off point for a good amount of my research, and in fact led me to program my project as a bank...a kind of bank of materials that can pay out later when the bank (but not the architecture) has become obsolete.
This thread reminded me of Milwaukee's Cream City Brick. The only way to get it anymore is to reclaim it from a demolished building. It's kind of a romatic notion, in a way.
(As a child, I associated Cream City Brick with the taste of cream soda. A confusion of the senses, or synesthesia, if you will.)
The Athena Institute has published several papers on this topic...
A bank of materials, where these materials would "mature" and become better or more valuable (like money in banks in the golden past...)? Sounds a bit like a material garden more than a storage - this can slip easily into a case of a strong framework and then "material" as independent, non-structural stuff. I think the example of the "Big Dig House" is quite nice in the way the reclaimed parts are structurally essential and not filler, or surface.
---
You could approach materials by using them in as pure a way as possible: re-use would then be up to the scavengers - purely one-material homogenous metal-parts could be melted and moulded easily anew, wood could be used in as robust and "supersized" way as possible to accomodate future refining into smaller units, and so forth...
---
The value of ruins is of course pretty problematic - it has so much to do with nostalgia and/or the values of the society in general. From english garden-ruins, the SITE big-box-stores, to the Twin Towers - ruins and their meaning could easily swallow your thesis.
Maybe a focus on materials, patina, re-use, and such would help to hold a thesis (and a project) together?
Helsinki, definitely. I have from the beginning adopted an almost dryly pragmatic approach to the project. Romantic notions of "ruin value" belong to the critic and not myself, as the designer. The thesis then is primarily focused on a physical/material transformation of the architecture to better accommodate future scenarios beyond growth (as in specific [or general] scenarios of decline).
What I'm looking for is some inspiration of how to integrate permanent parts of the architecture with more impermanent parts. Can the roof, shell, interior partitions, etc. deteriorate or be stripped off to reveal an embedded architecture that is in fact more "appropriate" to a future scenario (say post-peak oil, as one basic example). So, instead of large leasable area, one is left with smaller (heatable) spaces in, say, thick concrete (vaults, in a literal AND nonliteral sense), as well as an opening up of maybe more public spaces for future barter markets, etc.
The best example of this is probably still the Colosseum, but I'd love to see other precedents, or even some building technology that might facilitate a removal of materials from permanent aspects of a building (prefab? modular?).
I appreciate the thoughtful replies thus far.
Here's an example of an industrial-type space where a reclamation process is taking place in a piece-meal fashion:
http://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=20#
Look at the other projects as well - the firm places a lot emphasis on interior/shell-situations as well as experiments with finishes and materials. They have many thoughtful projects that tackle building in built-up areas.
for an interesting take on this you might read Robert Smithson's essay "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic NJ". It describes this process in reverse, kind of the negentropic flip of the entropic coin, although Entropy and the passage of time play a large role in his work..on that you might read his essay on Central Park and FLO.
wow odb,
Smithson is a truly good example to study, I wonder how his name didn't pop up yet. Good suggestion.
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