2013 SOM Prize for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design
Architectural Afterlives

Architecture persists; it is a fundamental and immutable quality of the structures and environments we build. These objects, spaces, and places often possess a material permanence that extends beyond the functional lifecycle we imagine for them, continuing to exist as artifact, ruin, fragment, or an idea, even long after the more mutable values of culture, technology, and politics have moved on. This nebulous territory of existence stretching from obsolescence to renewal is the architectural afterlife, where the original purpose of a place is gone or faded, its functional value in question, or it has witnessed or faces the prospect of abandonment or destruction. Nevertheless, in its afterlife this architecture finds itself reshaped, on an often-unexpected road toward a new meaning.

This collection of twelve visual essays is the informal culmination of a research field trip conducted in 2015, across 17 countries and 60 cities over the span of six months. Part travel impressions and part fantastical speculation, these stories represent an oblique meditation on the notion of usefulness, and the struggle between architecture’s timelessness and its timeliness. Each of these case studies explores the unique influences of geopolitics, economics, and industry on the life of a place, and will hopefully become provocations for future projects that think about how places evolve and change, how they persist, or stay the same. Although far from comprehensive, these collected thoughts aim to contribute to a much larger conversation about the relevance of architecture and the nature of its resilience in the changing shape of this world.

Resilience, Obsolescence, and Transformation in Forms of Power
Pretravel Research Proposal

In the original research proposal: “Useless Architectures: A Search for New Meanings After Obsolescence,” the central question had been: what becomes of architecture after usefulness? While this question still remains critical to the research ahead, to examine architecture only after its decline into oblivion would be merely fetishizing obsolescence’s visceral qualities. The missed opportunity to contemplate both the “source” and the “casualty” of obsolescence leads to two important corollary questions: what causes obsolescence and what (forms) can become obsolete?

To look at obsolescence in depth, it is as if one needs to first observe larger processes at play. What are the factors that engender obsolescence? Cultural shifts, disruptive technological innovation, or even catastrophic disasters? These forces may be best described as dominant forms of power, including but not exclusive to: religious, military, geopolitical, finance, industrial, and data. These forces arise and shift, enabling the creation of exceptional objects and structures. Whether it is in the ubiquity of their presence in daily life, or the monumentality of their scale, these forms of power massively transform their surrounding social, ecological, and economic environments.

The revised proposal: “Resilience, Obsolescence, and Transformation in Forms of Power,” allows an investigation into the consequential effects of obsolescence in direct correlation with the powers that create form. Each power harnesses a unique medium, produces a different type of artifact, and leaves a specific kind of residue. Power types also intermingle (military-industrial) to create hybrid forms. Furthermore, for certain powers, forms of waste and destruction are an intentionally created type of obsolescence. Finally, it is in a power’s decline that one witnesses the (infra)structures of its armature fall into disrepair and abandonment.

And what of form itself? Are all forms doomed to the same fate, or are certain forms prone to obsolescence, while others remain resilient, or emergent? Often times the physical artifact of form persists even long after it has lost its value—whether it is an obsolescence of style, function, or structure. Are certain forms more easily reappropriated? Especially in the temporality and flexibility of today’s needs, one cannot help but wonder: is there an order of natural selection among forms—does form write its own obsolescence?

For the purposes of travel, three broad categories of power types have been defined:

1. Extraction, Storage, Distribution: The Empires of Resource Acquisition
2. Cycles of Production / Destruction: Markets & Industry
3. Manifestations of Ideological Power

Within each category are subcategories and key places or structures to investigate, with wildly varying scale, context, and age. Perhaps due to the breadth of the general topic, each of these threads of inquiry merely skim the surface of much deeper topics. However, the method of the broad survey allows one to simultaneously investigate multiple overlapping topics, in the hope that one may chance upon revelations regarding the complex reciprocal relationship between power, form, and obsolescence.

The notion of the obsolete is a familiar theme in architecture. The designation is given to a building or infrastructure once it has been deemed unable to fulfill its original purpose. Without functional value, it becomes in a sense, useless, and doomed to abandonment, destruction, and eventually oblivion. However, the circumstances surrounding a building’s fall into disuse vary broadly: from cultural shifts, disruptive technological innovation, to even catastrophic disasters. As the rate of modern innovation and progress increases, it is likely that the rate of obsolescence also follows. It becomes critical to ask: what becomes of architecture after usefulness?

James Leng, “Architectural Afterlives”

Afterthoughts

One problem with working on something over an extended period of time is that opinions often change before the writing is done. Over the course of the project, the only constant has been the continual flux of its organization and framing. But I’ve been incredibly privileged to be able to partake in this process, as I grappled with, mulled over, and attempted to distill a handful of loosely connected themes and places into coherent stories. When I started this journey, I was looking for examples of obsolescence around the world. However, what I discovered was that buildings and places are resilient, always seeming to live strange and unexpected second lives. These “unintentional” uses, in many cases, make them extraordinary to visit and experience. This realization lays the groundwork for the next set of questions: if architecture is more interesting, engaging, and resonant, when used differently than its creator intended, should designers find new ways to define utility and value? In a sense, traveling and writing this report was the preamble to a much longer project ahead. I’ve come away from this research with few answers, but full of questions and inspiration. I intend to continue various threads of this research in the upcoming year at Syracuse University, as the 2018–19 Harry Der Boghosian Teaching Fellow. This opportunity will allow me to take some of my hypotheses forward into the realm of buildings, where theory and design artifacts may engage in a productive dialogue.