Living archaeology
Like an archaeologist he removed layer for layer of the material substance of buildings, safeguarded the traces of everyday life that had taken place in the buildings in and around the metropolis.
He transferred fragments of buildings from various urban sites to exhibition spaces.
Following Smithson’s methods of seeing the present as though in a science fiction novel, that is, looking from the future back to the past, he designed his own “living archaeology”.
Construction sites and ruins were for him two sides of the same coin, namely, indicators of a modernist understanding of temporal development, of progress, and belief in the future.
In his own words, “Ruins in reverse” are the opposite of the “romantic ruin” because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.
For him the categorical separation of plan and realization, idea and reality, concept and event, individual and environment was partially responsible for that which he felt to be the aporia of architecture.
Folie, S. 2009 Modernism as a ruin : an archaeology of the present Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2009.
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