Beginning from the End: Deconstructing Context in Design-Build Studios

In his talk entitled “The Solitude of Buildings”, Rafael Moneo stated that the true value of architecture can only be revealed when the “protection of architects and critics” are gone, and the building resides alone within the site and situation in which it is built. In this talk, Moneo raises a real concern that without a view towards the life a building might live within a particular context, architecture and the students of it are in danger of producing objects rather than participants accountable to the place and situation in which they are built.Design/build studios have over the past half-century emerged, almost viscerally, in response to this question of how what we teach can be accountable and actively engaged with the world. These unique and very real situations are immersed within a context of vulnerability, unpredictability and accountability unlike almost any traditional studio setting. Since the middle of the 20th century the industrialized agricultural movement swept across the mid-west region of North America causing many farming communities to shrink in response to the race to farm more land with less people using larger equipment. This shift has left countless abandoned century-old buildings behind in its wake peppering the industrial agricultural landscape. These buildings, although abandoned, are host to immense resources of old-growth lumber hidden behind their weathered appearance.In 2007 the author began an unbuild/design/build architecture studio in collaboration with a farming community of sixty-eight people located in the central Canadian prairies. These studios have tested how deconstruction can stand in radical opposition to the entropic path of our singular purpose building designs. By beginning from the perceived “end” of the life of a building, these studios have reimagined a building’s life cycle and introduced students to the meaning of construction through an initial act of disassembly. By working closely with the community members, the living-memories of these structures are revived through the unique histories that are shared and transform the meaning of this material within the new design/build projects the students produce for them. Over the past seven years this studio has resulted in the deconstruction of five century-old buildings, and the creation of eight new structures using locally reclaimed material to serve this community, once again, yet in a new way. This paper will critically review the lessons learned so far, reframing how the author has come to appreciate the role of the design studio as not only an effectual teaching model, but also as a potential agent of social and economic change within a community. By working over a number of years this project has offered the author a new understanding of what important issues can only be revealed through a sustained commitment to a single place and people. Over time, this studio has used it’s own work to see first-hand how the past intentions of previous projects have stood defenseless to the unintended results of their ultimate use as well as the unexpected impacts they’ve had within the culture of the community.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7