When we're gone
I have always had this question lingering in mind ever since I started architecture school; What happens to architecture when we are gone?
Thinking of this weeks reading, Junkspace, I find it hard not to think of this question. What used to be the hangout after school is now an abandoned wasteland not filled with stores or people but emptiness. "Junkspace cannot be remembered," (177). But I do. Thinking of all the money and the hours I have spent just window shopping. The consumerist in me wishes they weren't dying, but the architect in me wants them to become something different. Malls today remind me of big box stores, so industrial, and what happens after they are no longer there is an abandoned box of nothingness. For various reasons they close, and leave that city or town without a resource they can't so easily find, all in one, besides online. The digital world has changed the way we think and act so drastically within the past decade. I still remember the sound of my old desktop computer starting up, and finding something to do because it would take at least 10 minutes for it to load. The fact that I remember when the first iPhone came out, and now we are on 13, blows my mind. The world is moving at an unimaginable pace and architecture must find a way to keep up. So the question still remains...What happens to architecture when we are gone? Does it degrade into nothingness and become abandoned? Modern architecture is junkspace, it has no true meaning anymore besides trying to compete to make the coolest looking building. In the end, when we're gone, our architecture will mean nothing unless we make it impactful. Impactful meaning explicit and usable. We have to make architecture for people again, that is the only way it can survive...
...when we're gone.
Kimani, this question that you pose is something that resonates with me. There are two books I've read within the year: The Road and The Bear. These two follow a narrative of some of the remaining people on Earth and how they use buildings once meant for one thing as another. In The Road, it was survival; The Bear was a notion of what was before her existence. This conversation you have is so unique because there won't be an answer, only solutions to minimize an already concerning issue.
ReplyDeleteI’m very intrigued on the question you post. The first thing popped in my mind is that nature will reclaim the abandoned structures. Like we see in many abandoned structures that are now populated with plants. But a part in me can’t help but ask more. Yes, we can see plants taking over the structure, but a significant percentage of the structure still visible. For me, I usually see this kind of image related to a strand-alone building. If the Great Mall of America is abandoned, how would the nature reclaims this vast square footage? Or a better question would be how long will it take for the nature to completely reclaims this vast amount of space? That is equivalent to the amount of time we have to deal with a land of wasted space part nature part manmade. It could be thousands of years for dust to settle and burry the whole thing under.
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