Life's Sign
The building is a significant part of the urban landscape. It is also in constant transformation, weathering the effects of climate damage, air pollution, technological change, and different layers of human intervention.
Life's signs are used to highlight the elements that serve as witness to the different layers of history. Without scars, the past is smoothed over and forgotten. The scars of a structure, like those on human skin, represent signs of injury and recovery, growth and transformation. A building's façade and a building itself display the scars of these layers of intervention, natural or artificial, such as the electrical wires, cables, air conditioners, and antennas, essential as oxygen, that add new possibilities of life to a structure.
There are situations where the structure may collapse and die. When the interaction between the tenant, the street, and the general public no longer exists, the building dies, frozen like a mummy. Various factors can influence or cause this condition.
Ruins are the first state of decay. As soon as there is no more life inside, the structure begins to decompose, slowly dying. In some cases, it may die suddenly, as a biological organ in a state of irreparable damage or distress.
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Year: 2013
The second state is reversal of decay, a preservation through artificial means. The structure enters into the museum condition, subject to engineering Botox to make its wrinkles disappear. Renovations of buildings seem so often to be influenced by the three-dimensional simulations that are used for the purposes of marketing a project: the structure looks unrealistic, without emotion. "Facadism" is an architectural concept that preserves the exterior of the building and brings contemporary construction inside. The building returns to a state of youth, though, as in real life, these things are themselves a facade.
