First Impulse
I’d like to study work that creates meaning from the immediacy of crises by formalizing the Collapse. There are a set of failures that architecture defines itself by avoiding. In an architecture that accepts them, meaningful form generating becomes limitless. Gravitational and material failure, chemical decomposition, high resolution digital decay and other logics of collapse superimposed over one another. But forms such as these dissolve the moment you confront them with an analysis. For these reasons Crisis Formalism is difficult to find, design or analyze.
The Edith Farnsworth House and its masterplan will serve as a site to attempt to analyze Collapse and Crisis Formalism through its current issues around climate change, political governance, historic landmark status, economic needs linked to its rural condition, evolving national non-profit status, etc all in the context of the architectural iconography it lives in. Apart from the core work of architecture, it’s also a site of architecture media that has had a profound impact on discourse through its photography and continued pervasiveness as an image. Collapse has two meanings, first it’s the crumbling of an object, a loss of gravity and soundness. The second meaning is closer to convergence, or that suddenly a lot of different things suddenly mean the same thing. This intersection of historicism, climate, economics, its failing structure and canon status make the site a petri dish for studying architecture out of scale with the world we’re in.