On Decay / Renewal

I am attempting to finish putting together my portfolio this weekend. Working on it for several weeks now and rooting through old files, I found this scan of a 4x7 print from a 35mm SLR: an alley in Barcelona in 2003. Pivotal to my development as an architect, the moment depicts a relief on the wall revealing the history of the city through decay. It holds a beauty in its honesty unique from the rest of the intricate local fabric. Decay represents renewal, as well as the temporal quality of what is usually considered permanent: architecture. 

Architecture is fragile. And there is a peacefulness to the architecture that only exists as a frayed edge of the urban fabric, freshly carved and ready for reassesment. 

Bano Demolido

Alex Spautz

2004

Later in my path to architecture I worked for MH/A in San Francisco and managed events at 3A Gallery. In April of 2008, I contacted Katherine Westerhout's dealer (Electric Works Gallery) and we set up a show of her Detroit work. The large format photographic prints of interior shots of derelict buildings in Detroit was a huge success. Detroit represents less opportunity and more return to nature. It is unfortunate it also implies urban sprawl, but ironic that the reason for this change was because of the decline of the car industry in the U.S.





Katherine Westerhout
Richmond III
2002


Now having studied architecture, landscape urbanism and urban design at CCA, I reflect back on the affect photography of decay had on me, and I recognize a clear relationship. Alan Berger's "Drosscape" and the Antoine Picon article "Ancient Landscapes From Ruin to Rust" are only a couple texts that begin to represent the embedded implications in the crumbling city center of Detroit, as well as the opportunity for renewal in frayed gaps and edges in the city fabric. 

Alan Berger
Graphic on Urban Sprawl in Atlanta, Drosscape
2006