Akos Moravanszky Circular materiality—key concepts in ecological construction “Most works of man are at some point modified and transformed, be they insignificant trifles or “immortal” works of art. A woman might alterher old dresses, andevenliterature gets revised, dramatized, and set to music, wrote Konstanty Gutschow and Hermann Zippel inthe introduction o their 1932 book Umbau.’ ‘Aconversion is more interesting than a new build—because, really, everythingis conversion’ Hermann Czech added some 40 years later.” Although both Gutschow and Czech referto the ubiquity of rebuilding, they also distance themselves from a modernism thatis merely about ‘expressing an external needtodesign’> With its linear concept of time, its exclusive focus on the new, on the future, modernism sees ‘the old’ as being atbest fit or he museum. Gutschow's comments on the works of man, on the other hand, point to a circular reading of time, especially when it comes to working with what's already there—and thar includes reusing building components in new struc- tures. Itis, then, about more than just what is ‘interesting’: if everything is a form of conver- sion, as Czech says, then a new build could simply be amore interesting conversion. When architects make conversion their central focus, however, their aimis to address not just a phy ical structure but a process too: here, the built work is a place where materials, be they geo- logical ortechnologicalin origin, intersect with images that, in turn, have their originsin art or architectural history, in films, or in literature. Everything is in a process of constant trans formation or conversion—structures, cities, spaces, images, identities. Not only could appreciating the full implication of what that means give rise to interesting new solutions, it could also allow us to rethink architecture, tomake it anintegral part of what the Rhenish architect-mystic Rudolf Schwarz called ‘the built Earth’ Expropriation: loot and spolia Inarthistory, building components that have been removed from their original setting and reused in a new structure are known 2s spolia. Originally the Latin word spoliareferred tomiltary spoils, primarily to weaponry seized fromthe enemy. This was not private plunder but trophies of war intended for public display. Similarly, spoliation, the removal of goods or Parts of buildings from an earlier built setting, was symbol of domination and subjugation used to demonstrate the victor's military and cultural superiority. By the Middle Ages, the term spolia had come to incorporate not just plundered artworks and building fragments but reused building components as well. twas. in those days, almostimpossible to get quality building stone in Rome, as all the ancient quarries had been abandoned. Asa result, the Colosseum itself became a quarry, its stone being highly valued for its enduring quality and usable for- mat, which saved time and labour. Many of the buildings built in Rome in late antiquity were made almost entirely from spolia, among them the Santa Costanza church “*"), Where columns were salvaged from different sources, plinths of new stone were used to balance variations in height, while spolia were also often turned around, with uprights serving as horizontals and architraves as side supports. In those days, this pragmatic approach to valuable materials was ubiquitous:Vory panels were re-carved, and parchment during the Fourth Crusace (1204), INching sheets scraped clean to be written on anew. the elaborately carved F ie ri Actitani rgd In such cases, greater value was attachedto_ described by Ruskin as "the two most nop,’ the material than to the art. pillars in Venice’, and the porphyry scul ee group Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs. Probes the best-known example of medieval spo, the latter was repurposed asa cornerstone gf the basilica’s facade, thereby underiinin Venice's supremacy over Constantinopie The public display of objects belonging +, another place—and another era or culture. may be the bread and butter of today’s muse. umsand galleries, but back then it necessitajey a great deal of effort; the objects in questig, were thus much admired by local citizens ang their erection or installation accompanied, public rituals. The primary function of the tetrarch sculpture, then, isn’t to serve asaco,. nerstone of the basilica or To present military spoils but to contribute to identity-building within the city. ee) When discussing such spoliation, we need to distinguish between a pragmatic, material-driven approach and an ideological, meaning-based one. Examples of the former include medieval city walls in former Roman colonies, structures that were often built with stones taken from old cemeteries or temples. Here, spoliation was driven by a desire to save labour—aesthetic considerations were sec- ondary at best. The rapid pace of development in medieval cities, meanwhile, could only be maintained by reusing timber. Likewise, the expansion and large-scale remodelling of European cities that took place in the 18thcen- tury depended on the reclamation of existing building material. The ideological, meaning-based ap- proach relies on the recognition of an object's Theline between the pragmet- commemorative values, 1o borrow art historian ic and the ideological, however, is fluid. isthe Alois Riegl's term:itsart value, itshistoric value, use of attractively worked stone, suchas fut and the sensory value of its material and work- ed antique column drums, in substructures manship. The aimwasto harness these values and supportingwalls, as seen in the Churcho! and the original iconography within the new StDonatusin Zadar, Croatia, orin the Frankish cultural and architectural setting. St Mark's fortress of Parikia "9! on the island of Paros BaslicainVeniceisacommonreference point always a deliberate act of degradation, ora for such an approach: its facade features col- it, in fact, be an act of historic preservation? umns and reliefs looted from Constantinople Created by architectural practice KAI” 19!completedin 2009, Magdeburg’s Lesezeichen from where glass windows, wooden carvings, Salbke 4! is similarly ambiguous. With its_and stone fragments from cathedrals were facade featuring distinctive pressed alumin- frequently sold via cloth trade networks to %t, ium panels salvaged from the demolished England’s landed gentry.® Stone taken from Horten department store in Hamm, Westpha- monasteries in southern France, meanwhile. lia, this open-air library makes you wonder went into the construction of the courtyards lin whether locals saw any irony in material from from which the Cloisters, home to the medieval ~ _ atemple toWest German consumerism being collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum ny Transferred to a shrinking city in the once of Art, takesits name; spolia from monasteries t,, Communist East. dismantled after the Revolution were bought my by art collector George Grey Barnard around 1910, then shipped to America and in 1925 sold onto John D. Rockefeller, the patron behind the museum's new building. As recently as 1971, stones from the old London Bridge of 1836 were used to clada concrete bridge over a channel leading to Lake Havasu, @ reservoir in Arizona Today, even examples of Americana such as distinctive building components or billboards. and promotional mascots are salvaged from. As the American economy boomed, a huge market for European spolia developed in the US. Even well-known archi- tects such as Stanford White got involved, acting as advisers and sometimes as dealers Mh too. Between 1919 and 1940, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the bi 4 media mogul of his day and the real-life inspi- aH a ration for Orson Welles’s classic film Citizen x = Kane, had architect Julia Morgan build him a Sere SS fairy-tale palace—La Cuesta Encantada—in ~ San Simeon, California. "° Hearst's agents, The looting of parts of old buildingsis_ who nicknamed him the Great Accumulator, rarely a spontaneous act: in most cases, spo- bought him European cloisters, patios, building liation was something either permitted or pro- ornaments, and coffered ceilings—primarily scribed bylocal leaders. Revolutions and wars from Spain and Italy—which were then inte- have always been the chief creators of spolia. grated into Hearst Castle.’ The incorporation ‘The French Revolution brought new impetus of Spanish spolia brought Iberian flair to the tothe international rade in artfrom destroyed vast estate, Iberian culture being something buildings. At its centre was the city of Rouen, that then loomed large in the Californian err EIgragination. Ensconced beneath his mighty parish coffered ceiling, Hearst musthave elt ue he was at the epicentre of power, the sen- arpa reporting inhisnewspapers having up public sentim against Spain (1898). ee ‘Small wonder, then, that an American newspaper felt moved To festoon its own seat with spolia: embedded into the base of Tribune Tower "9", built for the Chicago Tribune by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood (1923- 1925), are around 150 fragments of famous buildings that the Tribune's correspondents collected from across the globe. Today, the spolia also include a piece of steel from the destroyed World Trade Center, areminder of the consequences of war, destruction, and expropriation. Although the looting of archae- ological sites is now forbidden, destruction and spoliation still figure among the tragic con- sequences of demonstrations of power, be iniraq, Afghanistan, or Syria. The artworks and fragments thus plundered cannot be shownin public, meaning they often vanishinto private collectors’ safes. Constructing identities Spoliation, though, is notjus, expropriation but appropriation too, with ney ‘owners seeking to harness the illustrious in. eage of their spoils. Appropriators of stone rom the Roman Empire thus sought to associate themselves with imperial glory, while Christan ‘conquerors who broke up heathen idolsend removed them from their original context didso both to rid them of their power and to harness their beauty for their own religious purposes. Ancient sarcophagus lids featuring heathen cult imagery, for instance, were incorporated into church walls, providing an apparentin- congruity with the Christian setting while also demonstrating Christian culture's capacity for assimilation. ‘particularly notable example of appre: priationiswhenan entire structureis subsumed into a later one, the old building becominga constituent part of the new. Rome's Theatredt Marcellus from 13 BC "*!, for instance, wes transformed intoa medieval fortress andlet@ converted into a palazzo for the Savelifemiy in the 16th century. Built around AD 300, tne Palace of Diocletian became the town of SA in the Middle Ages and still forms the hear! the Croatian coastal ity today, while the! of Diocietianin Rome were turnedintothese ica of St Mary of the Angels by ‘Michelange? and Vanvitelli. In 16th-century Cordoba. oe cathedral "®*\wasinsertedinto theois elmosque, a building that itself already con- tained numerous even older spolia. Rimini’s Tempio Malatestiano "™, created by Leon Battista Alberti between 1450 and 1460 asa mausoleum for Sigismondo Malatesta andhis lover, was built around a Gothic church from the 13th century. And Frank Gehry’s 1977/78 conversion of his Santa Monica residence "* extendsand surrounds a detached house from the 1920s. Gehry, however, also openedup the original house witha brutality that calls tomind the ‘splittings’ of Gordon Matta Clark, while additions made of chain-link fencing and cor- rugated stee! were viewed as similarly aggres- siveinterventions by the architect's neighbours. Architecture critics interpreted the house asan architectural psychogram, callingit‘the house that built Gehry’.® Even more noteworthy are spolia that serve not to enhance personal mythologies but rather to root a new building in local and national architectural history. Built between 1911 and 1923, Ragnar Ostberg’s Stockholm City Hall!""lis akey example of Scandinavia’s National Romantic style. In 1912, the planning committee asked the architect to salvage components and objects from condemned buildings that would capture the aspect and history of the city.® The wood from which the entrance was carved thus came from a 17th- century Swedish battleship that had recently been recovered from the fjord, while other spolia such as wall fountains, baroque portals, and wooden ceilings documented different phases in the city's development. For his pathways on Philopap- pos Hill opposite the Acropolis (1951-1957), Greek architect Dimitris Pikionis devised an imagined archaeological site comprising ‘established’ landscape elements, ancient fragments, and newly built structures, though he often let his craftsmen decide on the detail execution. Pikionis also built a small church dedicated to Saint Demetrius Loumbardiaris,incorporating stone from a neoclassical School building and the remains of a chapel The overall effect was to create a rich tapes- try of artefacts spanning antiquity and the Present day, itv" ‘At Gibellina Nuovain Sicily, spolia even helped to shape the identity of a whole new town. After the original town of Gibellina was razed by an earthquake in 1968, Italian artist Alberto Burri covered the ruins witha crust of white cement (1984-1989), while architect Francesco Venezia gave the new town an exhi- bition space (1980-1987) in which the remains ofa stone facade from Palazzo di Lorenzo are embedded within a conerete body. "9"! After the Second World War, East ang West Germany pursued differing strategies when it came to dealing with the rubble of they, bombed-outcities. Theirapproaches, howevey, were similarly pragmatic: serviceable girdors beams, and bricks were salvaged and incoy, porated into new buildings; the rest was useq to fill in cellars or piled up in parks, with now mostly landscaped ‘rubble hills’ '"*' createg in major cities from Dresden to West Berlin, Where the ‘ideological’ utilization of spoliain the GDR—aswith the integration of the former Royal Palace's ‘Liebknecht portal’ "into the governing State Council's headquarters in Berlin—was a good fit with the regime's Social. ist Realism doctrine and its commitment to national and local building traditions, West Germany favoured a clean break with the past and therefore opted for pragmatic moderniza- tion. It’s true that Hans Déllgast incorporated bricks fromwar debris when rebuilding abomb- damaged wall at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, but his renovation also used concrete and steelin place of stone pillars and capstones.Post-reunification Germany's venera- tion of spoliais, therefore, somewhat paradox ical. There were calls for the rebuilt palace's facade to getits‘Liebknecht portal’ back (like a copy of a Roman marble bust gaining the original nose), to thus give the reconstruction astamp of authenticity—thoughthe very name Liebknecht connects it to the GDR era. Ina similar desire for authentication, original stone was incorporated into the reconstruction of both the Church of Our Lady in Dresden and the rebuilt facade of Braunschweig Castle, which had been demolished in 1960, while spolia have also been used to lend credibility to the reconstruction of Frankfurt’s Old Town. twas important or theidentity of acity, claimed architect Christoph Mackler, that ‘surviving original fagade elements, so-called spolia, are reintegrated so as to reveal something of the history of the place’.° The city’s urban planning department subsequently set up a website to catalogue existing Old Town spolia for use in this act of ‘urban rehabilitation’. Assemblage, bricolage, adhocism The appropriation of building compo- nents for use in another setting requires a methodology based onwhatis tohand, one that thus has to embrace spontaneity and chance. This alternative creative method differs from the modern-day planning model, which aims toleavenothing tochance. In his 1962 book La Pensée Sauvage (published in English as The Savage Mindin 1968), French anthropologist andethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss described the principle of bricolage as the opposite of an engineer’s ‘domesticated’ mode of thought; rather than following some precisely formulated plan, abricoleur improvises on the basis of the available resources, drawing ona diverse range of materials, objects, debris, and fragments. Thisidea was at the core of Charles Jencksand Nathan Silver's 1972 Adhocism manifesto which set outa pluralist, non-determinist, and anti-elitist vision of architecture and design."* The idea of an archi- tecture that incorporates chance into the design process had already been postulated by Austro-Swedish architect Josef Frankin his 1958 treatise ‘Accidentism’: ‘Every place in which we feel comfortable—rooms, streets, and cities—has originated by chance,’ he de- olared.”*in the essay, Frank offersa trenchant critique of how dogmatic modernism has become. There were, however, still modernist architects applying bricolage principles. Best known for his 1931 Maison de Verre in Paris, which he designed for the doc- tor Jean Dalsace, Pierre Chareau also built a 1946 studio "ein East Hampton, Longisiand, for the American avant-garde painter Robert Motherwell, using military shelters, known as Quonset huts, that were available at low cost from the army. The shelters were made of semicircular steel supports clad in corrugated ‘metal sheets; Chareau had sections of the metal sheets cut away, fitting industrial green- house windows that acted as skylights."With his Casa Garelli in Champoluc, meanwhile, Carlo Mollino built what architec- tural historian Sergio Pace described as a ready-made assemblage’.”* The structure was created between 1963 and 1965 using wood from a dismantled rascard, a traditional local grain store, that had stood on the opposite side of the Aosta Valley, *»».61.7% The economic slump of the 1970s and, in particular, the oil crisis of 1973 gave new impetus to the search for architectural alter- natives to society's throwaway culture, Around 1978, one-third of North American architects’ income was coming from adaptive reuse, ie. from the conversion of old buildings using their rviceable components, as creatives fol- lowed Andy Warhol's lead and moved into abandoned factories."” Publications such as Steve Baer and Lloyd Kahn's Shelteror the Whole Earth Catalog spread the bricolage prin- ciple around the world. Creative recycling became the watchword for architects such as Michael Reynolds, who used metal canisters, tyres, glass bottles, or car body parts as build- ing materials "*, in 1973, British magazine Architectural Designdedicated its December issue publishing a long article by Martin Pawley, for whom the key to social and ecological housing lay not in individual-scale bricolage, but in the development of a technically advanced usage of consumer waste: ‘Inthe developed countries of the West, housing can only achiove th Yq versality which has so long eluded it, by, move its resource base from that whichis scargg "4 costly to that which is not only pientify, cheap, but ubiquitous and valueless, 7p alternative architecture not only aimegt® make housing more socially and environ, tally responsible, it also combined pragmay solutions forwastereuse with the pursuit gg. appropriate aesthetic. emerge Reta ca Peet Today, the aims of the alternative architecture movement of the 1970s are being pursued by groups such as Rural Studio. Founded by Samuel Mockbee in 1892 in Hale County, a deprived area of Alabama, it mostly consisted of students from the Auburn University, who each spentone semester there. Run by Andrew Freear since Mockbee's death in2001, the studio rebuilds houses using mate- rials such as hay, car tyres, and windscreens; “110 the subject of ‘garbage housing’, its 2002 design for Lucy's House» 2! even has walls made of 72,000 carpet tiles.The subversiveness that avant-garde artists’ loft apartments once represented lives oninthe attitudes of many eco-activists, though italso increasingly shapes the kind of brown- field projects where investment potentiallies."* Crumbling plasterwork, an auraof degradation, what Rieg! would call age-value, these things can be an attractive selling point. Architects such as Rem Koolhaas have demonstrated, however, that adaptive reuse does not have to retain an air of ruin: instead, their successful transformations show that, via intelligentinter- ventions, former industrial sites can provide new, attractive, and easily accessible urban spaces—see, forinstance, Milan's Fondazione Prada 02, 2 In socialist states, adhocism was a ne- cessity: their state-run construction industries didn’t getinvolvedin the building of single-family houses and so self-build was commonplace. Alongside new supplies, whose availability was limited, self-builders also utilized material from demolitions. The heavy prefab components favoured by the construction industry, on the otherhand, rarely featured, as machinery would have been required o install them; there were nonetheless cases of small properties being built with prefab concrete panels—panels that were manufactured for housing estates but also found their way into private hands. State socialism’s debris, meanwhile, provided the building material for Alexander Brodsky’s poetic structures. His Pavilion for Vodka Ceremonies (2004) consisted solely of 83 windows from a demolished factory "=, while his Rotunda was made out of old doors. (2009). ‘twas an experiment in space and an attempt to save some beautiful things’,"* the architect explains.” 60.77 Simulacra, virtual spolia The ability of spolia to provide histori- cal associations has led architects from the Renaissance onto use virtual spolia. Architec- ture historians disagree as to whether the granite columns of Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome are ancient spolia that were reworked, ata later date or whether the architect used granite from various quarries in order to give the work a deeper historical dimension. Rome is the city for spolia both real and virtual. Piranesi’s fantastical designs com- bined fragments retrieved fromthe Pontanello marshes with details from other eras of impe- rialart, all of which he transferred onto piccole architetture such as fireplaces, Despite their modest size, these bricolages invoke the mag nificence of ancient Rome. Luigi Moretti (1907- 1973) also realized major projectsin Milan, butNis Casa Girasole (1947-1950) could only bein. ingcomponents. Thisisreflectedin the Rome, he radiealy ifagade, nhvcnatords Alison and Peter Smithson. In the porto Glimpses of the building's interior, expressing period, their ‘As Found’ philosophy off, "r the presence and potency of the Eternal City's. new perspective on the commonpia, ea havorine tragically fragmented body and openness towards the way entirely prog cenertine base displaying tragmentsreminis- things can reinvigorate Our powers of ya Gent of archaeological finds" can only be tior’.”'In the 1990s, the Smithsons design n understood in connection with the stillrecent buildings for clients who had to live with 278 experience of the Second World War. of assembled objects, calling theirnew con, hy of creating flexible homes whose eleme doors, and windows can be relocated ic": glomerate ordering’. Their Pu-Away Hou "97", built between 1993 and 2000, ang ye? Hexenhaus, designed for furniture manuje” turer Axel Bruchhauser, both date from ype period. 7¥9.63.75 is The town hall that Dutcharchitect F.P. J. Peutz built in Heerlen from 1936 to 1942 "0 also exhibits virtual spolia. A concrete struc ture with brick infill, its pale limestone-clad exteriors largely unornamented, butthere are echoes of spolia in the main facade's heavy ceremonial balcony, which bears darker stone andamoulded edge, and inthe two free-stand- ing columns connected to the side wall by architraves. Peutz lectured in the history of classical architecture in Maastricht and also worked in heritage conservation—he led the reconstruction of the city’s Roman baths in the 1940s,2 Often, building components are re- used for reasons of economy, in order to con- serve scarce resources. Sometimes, though, salvage is about glutrather than scarcity, with the many salvaged objects not merely being preserved but also displayed so that the new building resembles a kind of museum of build-lity, circularity Architecture is an expression of hu- |Hi mankind's pursuit of immortality. Buildings out- last people; not subject to the boundaries of human mortality, they symbolize permanence. The veins of marble indicate geological time, ‘the grouting of brickwork suggests the rhyth- mic action of bricklaying, the bolt heads of an iron girder hint at the staccato action of machin- ery. Architecture is a combination of time and material—time bothin terms of historic eraand of its ability to endure. Our understanding of durability s indivisible from our understanding of time and material. Indeed, the word endure comes from the Latin durare, which originally meant harden (from durusfor hard) and later came to mean last or persist. But while hardness is a measurable quantity, durability isa relative concept. Forthe Slovenian architect Joze Pleénik, architecrura perenniswas a question of form: itis thus the continuity of classicism’s visual language and of its rural vernacular transformations that imbues architecture with meaningful function, even if the material traditions of its constituent parts may vary. For his part, Plednik used con- crete sewer pipes as supports in his Church of St Michael "2" in the Ljubljana Marshes (built 1937/38 and fitted out in 1940), thereby showing that, with the right treatment and usage, even the most profane object can be made sacred. A later example of the reuse of, material sourced from infrastructure is the communal residence at the Seitogakushi School "2", which was designed by Japanese architect Shin Takasuga and completed in 1980, Built by the schoo!’s students onthe small island of Miyake, it was constructed entirely from around 5,000 wooden railway sleepers; the repurposed sleepers forming not only the supporting walls but also the roof truss and internal fixtures. Be it sewer pipes orrailway sleepers, here we find humble materials, infra- structure components that had played no prior part in architecture, being turned into enduring built works. By the 19th century, the pur- suit of durability was coming into conflict with the interests of industrial capitalism. Chicago's Marshall Field Wholesale Store "°*", built by Henry Hobson Richardson in 1886 anda fixture of architectural chronicles of the modern age, is regarded as the epitome of enduring archi- tecture: the surviving photographs seem to show a building thatis both durable inits actual materials and enduring in its architecture. The solid brick walls clad in red Missouri granite; the stark facade with its structure reminiscent of Florentine Renaissance palaces or Roman viaducts; the huge size, and the rough, almost geological appearance of its granite blocks— allthis was much admired at the time. And yet, ten years after its completion, the building had already become obsolete, both inits function asaninner-city wholesale outlet and inits con- struction, the combination of vast bulk and weak foundations quickly leading to uneven settlement. The store was soon pulled down, andthose much-admired granite blocks were recycled as fill for the levelling of anew park ing|ot.As a booming centre of trade and commerce, Chicago was seeing accelerating Production and consumption cycles. Hardly ‘Surprising, then, thatit was | here, in around 1900, ‘that obsolescence, the phenomenon of prod- ucts becoming outdated or redundant, first drew the attention of researchers and theore- Ticlans. Itwas experiences suchas this thatled tothe coining of the term ‘creative destruction’, which economist Joseph Schumpeter identi- fied in 1942 as an essential fact of modern Capitalism.?* By the late 1950s, the criticism of obsolescence as a feature of America’s throwaway society was growing louder.*Asa consequence, preservationism took on a greater significance, leading to buildings that were deemed historically important being rescued and restored, then equipped with museum shops and opened to the Public. Of Perhaps greater significance was the opposi- tion that came from the counter-culture move- ment, which took its cue from the vernacular tradition presented in Bernard Rudotsky's suc- cessful 1964 exhibition Architecture Without Architectsat New York's MoMA. While 1970s alternative architecture was mentioned earlier in conjunction with adhocism and bricolage, Of greater relevance today are those practi- tioners who took their cue more from minimal or conceptual art, who were interested notin tinkering butin painstakingly developing sus- tainable solutions. The motto of Peter Zumthor’s compe- tition project for the Swiss pavilion "= at ‘Sound Box’. For Joseph Beuys, the battery epit- omized the potential for energy to be stored— — mething he visualized via the com, Steopper andteltand vias dense layey"™ cloth. Asthe book Swiss Sound Boxnoteg. 8 word battery is used to illustrate the gh, Me interaction of materials 2 Tasked with creating enationg| exhibition pavilion and thus with conveyings sense of identity, Zumthor responded not merely with images and symbols. For the Pavilion’s construction, 1,500 trees were cut down fromwoodland across 85 municipalities in 13 Swiss cantons, then sawn into timbers, Thesewere held together with steel cablescon. nected via spring tie rods, enabling themto be Separated after the exhibition and reusedelse- where. In this case, identity and place are embodied by a representation of the com: mercialand ecological cycle of acommodiy, namely of the energy source thatis wood, which, inthis temporary assemblage, is imbued with Cultural value for the duration of the exhibition Of particular interest are the few cases where building components have been reused in an urban planning context. In 1938, Székesfehérvar, once the royal seat of the Kingdom of Hungary, hosted festivities to mark the International Eucharistic Congress 'npreparation for which architect Ivan Kotsis was charged with giving its historic Old Town more harmonious overall look. Kotsis, an ‘Stuttgart School, interpreted Knitting together of treasured old buildings within a coherent framework. vié his task as ‘the |an ordering of the setting and an aesthe: overhaul’ He thushad wings of era complex "°°! either demolished or extended via anew-build section; the closed bays of the demolished wing were relocated; while a nearby artnouveau facade, deemed too showy, was given a simpler look. The result was delightful urban ensemble in which open and intimate courtyards are connect led via nal staircases. exter aw TESTE Inthe light of such projects, we need torethink previous attitudes to identity of place. For Kevin Lynch, urban identity was primarily consequence of clear orientation within a city, of the ability to comprehendits structure, ie. to have a mental map,” while Christian Norberg-Schulz associated the genius loci with sensory perception.?® The identity of Székestehérvér as we know it today is indivis- ibly linked with the decisions taken by Kotsis. Here, rather than a strict preservationist ap- proach that places existing buildings under a bell jar, we see a dynamic interpretation of enduringness characterized not by stasis or obsolescence but by ongoing metamorphosis, construction, and deconstruction. Such inter- ventions demonstrate a ‘curatorial’ approach tothe urban realm, in which things are picked out, juxtaposed with others, and appropriately orchestrated: the identity of a place is thus constructed via a deliberate and subjective selecting of materials and forms. tis, however, elements from different places and epochs are brought together in one place. Such anorchestration of diverse things and eras can be seen at the house known as Dado, designed by Rudolf and Valerio Olgiati Rudolf Oigiati collected spolia throughout his lifetime. in his polemic Architekt, he writes: ‘I started systematically collecting cultural objects at the age of 20 in my home district of Flims, with the intention of returning each thing toits original place—something that, over the course of half a century, Ihave not succeeded in doing.’”* in order to keep everything safe, to preserve it through bad times’, hecleaned and catalogued these objects and stored them in abarn "*%),3° The bulk of the collection later moved to Museum Olgiati in Flims, while Dado passed to Rudolf Olgiati’s son Valerio, who established his architectural practice there. With its mix of spolia assembled and inte- grated by Olgiati senior and more recent fix- tures and objects, the house can be seen as another example of the Smithsons’ ‘conglom- erate ordering’. Rudolf himself highlighted the connections between Greek architecture, local vernacular traditions, and Le Corbusier's aesthetic—now Valerio has added another historical layer, as the monograph Dadomakes abundantly clear." Both in Europe and also possible for those forms and materials to Japan, the wholesale destruction experienced break free from the curator’s control so that during the Second World War and the chal- unintended associations begin to develop, lenge of post-war reconstruction led archi- muchasapaintinginagallery caninteractwith tects to think about large-scale urban rebuild- ahygrometer or ared fire extinguisher. Equally, ing. Japan's Metabolist movement perceived meaningful connections can and do develop— the city not asa finished entity but asa living often unintentionally—when architectural organism that was undergoing constantmetamorphosis. Rudolf Schwarz’s book Von der Bebauung der Erde also dates trom the 'ast years of the war. It describes how natural and built landscapes merge, how the fabric of the Earthis transformed into building material His Church of St Anna'*» 4! in| Diiren (1951-1956) Was built on the site of a Gothic church that had been destroyed during the war. When Schwarz Visited the ruin, ‘the old stone was still piledup there; we decided to reuse it for the brickwork of the new building so that the sacred stone could provide material foranew work, andthe old be resurrected in the new.'2? This approach, albeitinaless explicitly religious form, was also adopted by Wang Shu for his museum in the Chinese city of Ningbo, which the architect built from the rubble of the surrounding villages "°°: ‘The site chosen was typical for contemporary China: the original villages had all been torn down, the rice fields had been evened out, and the closest build- ings were more than 200 metres away. There was no clue to follow. How to recall people’s memories and spirits? | decided to design a hill”°® Rather than presenting identifiable sym- bols of the past, his design allows the visitor1o Today, the way we build upon thes needs toaid the regeneration of he Barge” thar requiresanew appreciation ofthe ay e® planet's systems are interconnected, case of spolia, the reuse of stone, ornay or entire sections of buildings was, try foremost, a symbolic act. Similary, tod circular materiality, the reuse of building ponents, is not just a pragmatic choice, s. also integral o sustainable cultural practi: a onstrtyOutschow anderen Z5pe UCU Stee ae 2 HermannCateh 2a Abwochhing' (973) 6. 2 ‘Auagouine Seiten zur Archer rx ee. Vir Sou ee oe ere 78. 3 ‘urschowand poe. op 0. ‘ uct Scrwarz Von der Bebaung dr Erte ede Later Sehneier, 1040. 5 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice London: Smith, Ee SeeAnténtt Posie, Nweantn- Cena Eurpeen gimp ANew Golden Age(Abingcor: Rostedge, 2020), Z Surtoimes Bout dil Morgan, Archinect dndedn New et 8 ‘Bestia Colomine, The House That Butt etry’ naa (es). Frank Genny, arenrecrNew Yor GuggenpermMtceeun 2007 500 Aenkarin Pi Amer Stockh Town aera Arsnec ape (Ostberg Stockholm Nor kur 207, 37. » Nice Soyer, Flachoch stp ter vewwon Chess fas 224g 2008 re inti® Lv aus, The Savage Ming (Cheap: Uovennys connect with the villages’ former inhabitants. by touching the stone of their old homes: ‘| decided to collect the materials from the ruins and use them to build this new museum so that the vanished memory, the haptic feeling, and the time past would be collected and pre- served.’ 2018), accessed 25 Nov, 2021. pI. ODE 222e0iso208 u The studio was demolished in 1985 fr want ot potenti IE ‘enominaesieprcowesst ry Lew Min, Serge Pace, and Cato Molino, Lore ccerere® ‘montagne Cass Gare, Champotuc Mian: Mondadori ata, 208,20 2 Sharon 2hukin. Lot cing: Cuture and Cepinain aan OO {Borimore:JohneHopknsUriversty Press 1982, 2 arinPaveyGnbagerounng, AcheCvetormateriity 0 oneahcote Aleandorbrosskybuldtelnpostie’ Finance! Times 8 Mat 205 fedmanpnery comassetapaa rod Saeco Presa 20. Wat Avrs, win van don argh on Winam Graton, PP Poors ‘Achtok? 075-1088 exh cat Teche Hoge Enstonun (8, x ‘AlzcnandPete Shon, "he"RSF ound andthe nov ‘Robbin (ed), The independent Group: Posnwar rman ante sie of Pent Cambridge, Macs: Thal Press. 190), 208203, 2 ‘Reyne Banna ang Hroyuk Sued ContmporaryArchitotureot “pan (ew York: zz, 1985) 108-109: Ur Mater, bo? oon Gaa Neto foot (2000, 7-27, 2 Josoph A. Schumpeter, Capa, Soci, and Democracy (ion York: Harper Perera 1042) x \Vanoe char, These MakorstNow Yr: Dock. 1960) 2% Roderick (od) Sis SoundBor (Bact Bethawer 200, 2 2 annorss, uleroeservet Budapest Peas Kary 048) 41184, a Kevin Lynch, The mage oth City Cambridge Nava: The MIT Press 960) 2B Christan Norberg Schule, Genie fe Towards ¢Prenomenatoay ‘ot Archiecrce Nem et Rs), » ‘Rudo Olga Arce ie Srotsceit (Suto: Magacnunt ‘Buch, 1994; 2nd edn, Stuart: Jum M,Greshaber and Monitod Kron, ‘002,40. 30 Ursuso Reever nd Rutt Opiat,Baven mit den Sanen Chae: berwnur varia, 20088182. a ‘SelnoWlder fed), Dado CobsurunsbewatntvonRudaf iit) Une eri iin (eo0! Seansuse 207), 2 dol Schwarz, Kenta Wet vorde Sette edeber ne verig 1960). 223. 2 ‘Wang Su. imaginng he House Ze: Lara 20%}. u Be