SMASHUP TOO

14.00–18.00

Michelle Howard Luciano Parodi

CMT

CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY

SMASHUP TOO is the second part of a yearlong project that seeks to unearth what architecture has ceased to offer: the savageness, changefulness, naturalism, grotesqueness, rigidity and redundancy1 of the Gothic cathedral, and with it a more connected approach to our critically Thus, though savage, changeful, naturalistic, groendangered environment. tesque, rigid and redundant, Gothic cathedrals were also inherently sustainable and intimately connected

Too often, when something has to the place in which they dwelled. Indeed, the Gothic ceased to function in line with our cathedrals of the Middle Ages were usually scaled to expectations, whether it is a smart- house every citizen of the town and, contrary to sucphone or a shopping mall, it is dis- ceeding superlative edifices, they were erected by an carded rather than renovated. Even ambitious citizenry rather than the reigning monarch or the greatest works of architecture ruling party. In this respect, they not only represented have fallen prey to this tendency, a shared ambition and civic pride, but also a dwelling and the multitude of ruins above within which all could shelter. and beneath the earth attest to our aversion to repair. In the Middle Ages, when the average life expectancy was 43 years and the whole town could be wiped out by

But this was not always so. a fire or an invading (Gothic) horde in a matter of days, To start from scratch on virgin the building of a cathedral represented an extraordinary ground would have seemed a collective ambition. Now more than ever, such collective strange and curious undertak- ambition is needed if we are to enable the Earth to remain ing in the Middle Ages. Existing a good dwelling.2 church buildings would have provided not only a connection RIGIDITY/SMASHUP TOO perceives all entities as to the ideas and building tech- elastic, exchanging mutual influences and energies, and niques of their forebears, but exerting attractive powers. also valuable building materials and good, solid founda- CHANGEFULNESS/SMASHUP TOO supercharges tions. Even an awe-inspiring arguments to bounce against taste, preconceived ideas, addition would never have prejudice and laissez-faire politics. been considered as having “finished” a building, but NATURALISM/SMASHUP TOO is not 1 These were the terms that, in 1852, John Ruskin rather as part of an ongoing aggressive or threatening; it confronts strong used to lovingly describe process of maintenance. propositions with one another and asks them The Nature of Gothic not only to coexist but to improve. Architecture in the second volume of three of The Stones of Venice, entitled SAVAGENESS/SMASHUP TOO is The Sea Stories, published antifragile.3 between 1851 and 1853, Smith, Elder & Co., London. 2 To paraphrase Bruno GROTESQUENESS/SMASHUP TOO wears Taut: Die Erde eine the badge of imperfection with pride. gute Wohnung, in: Die Volkswohnung. Zeitschrift für Wohnungsbau und SiedREDUNDANCE/SMASHUP TOO is a dialogue lungswesen 1, no. 4, 1919, between balance and awareness, flying buttresses, custom-made tools and stereotomy … p. 45–48. 3 Term coined by Nassim Taleb: Antifragile. Things that gain from disorder, Penguin Random House Trade, 2014.