Degradation, Disintegration, Ruin

“There is no such thing as ancient architecture… They are all contemporary structures that are allowed to display their natural state, and they act as a bridge for us to consider a new way of designing,” said architect Barry Wark in his lecture “Ancientness and Future Forms of Coexistence,” hosted by SCI-ARC. Wark presented a model of eco-centric architecture, which de-centers humans within the built environment and makes intentional space for human and non-human lifeforms to cohabit. According to Wark, humans need to consider the aesthetics of ancientness—irregular masses, patinas, craggy facades—not as an immutable feature of the past but as contemporaneous a look as any monolithic, all-glass supertall.

Such a model requires a re-evaluation of temporal perspective. Thinking in terms of Earth-time—eons rather than millennia—allows architects’ definition of the built environment to broaden; one takes both the macro- and micro-worlds into consideration, and plans for a building’s use to extend far beyond its human occupants’ needs. Wark shared several projects featuring cliffs, grottos, serial modification, and machine learning that illustrated this point. The most illuminating example was his “House by the Sea” project, which challenges the picturesque audacity of the crisp, white, seaside cottage with a jagged textured facade that makes a perfect home for nesting birds and colonizing lichens. Compared to the saccharine green-washing that has run rampant within architectural discourse, Wark’s celebration of decay is a breath of fresh air.