Micron Hero

I VILLANDE SKOGEN.c.1906. Original work

From Lustige Blätter, 1899.

548. Lois Welzenbacher /// Schmucker House /// Ruhpolding, Bavaria, Germany /// 1938-39

OfHouses guest curated by Pedro Dionísio (Elara Fritzenwalden): HYPERMINIMAL #26 When does architecture expires?

«Instinctively, my first reaction would be to discuss issues related to fashion and style; we would debate when it went out of fashion. The architecture that seeks originality has a very short expiry date. As soon as copies and interpretations appear, it loses its value, and is no longer new, it has become out of date. An architecture whose spatial definition is set by the itinerary of the spectator is also perishable: it vanishes when it is emptied. We are left with just its evocation, like the memory of a good meal. When a space is not anchored in time, it has a later expiry date. The choice of a timeless material encourages eternal architecture. But this vision is Manichaean: it supports a moral judgement. It is boring to think of something eternally interesting, isn’t it? Our value is not perennial.

For food its decomposition, not fashion, that sets its time limit. When the ingredients decompose, they lose their initial qualities and become unhealthy. Architecture can also decompose when the effect of time weakens the tension originally present in the project. I am not referring only to the development of stable conditions because we can maintain instability, the feature of our time, indefinitely like the interminable silence at a concert before the final applause.»