Constructing Absence [electronic resource].

A.WKSHP 2019

Open access content

This book is an accumulation of images of adobe and its ecosystem taken in The Autonomous Region of Castile and Leon, Spain. The images are chosen as representations of the material viewed at different scales in context. The images are ordered by scale. At each end of the spectrum are the microscopically magnified granular composition, and the satellite image of the region, respectively. Only a portion of the images are within the range of a human’s visual perception. In 2008, the global financial crisis made visible the forces and flaws of a society based on an infinite growth economy, as evidenced by foreclosed homes, stalled building projects, and unfinished ghost- towns still lurking the Spanish landscape. The form of the city which is organized within this economic structure, is a by-product of financial transactions and its architecture which functions primarily as an abstraction of capital. In Spain, the property market, the boom, the bubble and the crisis are all referred to eponymously as, “El Ladrillo.” or “The Brick.” This conflation of language into the physical brick unit, while conceptually convenient, betrays the hidden agency of materials in an economy built on the foundation of real-estate speculation as the engine of an infinite growth economy. Cooked and chemically composed for durability, and perfected for mass production, the brick’s value lies specifically in it’s standardization. If the modern brick is the ergonomically-refined unit of architecture as abstracted capital, than its ancestor; the adobe, is its antithesis. Adobe is uncooked and made from abundant straw and mud—free in terms of money, but location- specific and weather and labor dependent. Without proper maintenance, the material itself decomposes into its constituent parts. It is dependent on labor and season, and variable in size weight and composition, adobe resists the ubiquity and standardization which makes brick so perfect for speculation, making it by comparison inherently
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Architecture
Finance

Text

Jesse McCormick
Khoi Nguyen
A.WKSHP