An exhibition organized by
the School of Architecture
4.15–
5.16.2022
PRŠIĆ & PRŠIĆ
Scrap Object, 2022
There is a photo of Frank Lloyd Wright in the desert, presumably in Arizona, his back turned to the camera, spotting scope nearby, as if an unwitting subject of a clumsy Caspar David Friedrich painting. To his right, natural things—water, plants, what looks like edible fruit—are on display above a sign that reads, didactically, “Material From Countryside”. The countryside—somewhere out there, beyond our own built environment—provides us with resources from which architecture emerges, against which it can position itself, or to which it can refer.
To consider the natural world as somehow outside of ourselves is to also to ignore our integral place within it. We as a species rely upon mostly inorganic, perpetually obsolescent materials to survive. Ceramics, like many ubiquitous building materials, are not known to ever naturally break down. When considered on a geological timescale, the relationship between its longevity and its duration of use make a ceramic cup seem almost as morally dubious to produce as its styrofoam counterpart. Scrap Object is an idea about what it means to dig into the trash heap and build from it. In learning to live with our ever-accumulating waste, we might view it as a new kind of organic material—a circular resource that is imperfect, and messy, but plentiful and, therefore, of extreme value.
All discarded ceramics scraps were gathered from the “cemetery” at the Steel Yard in Providence, RI. Special thanks to Maxime Lefebvre for connecting us to them.
To consider the natural world as somehow outside of ourselves is to also to ignore our integral place within it. We as a species rely upon mostly inorganic, perpetually obsolescent materials to survive. Ceramics, like many ubiquitous building materials, are not known to ever naturally break down. When considered on a geological timescale, the relationship between its longevity and its duration of use make a ceramic cup seem almost as morally dubious to produce as its styrofoam counterpart. Scrap Object is an idea about what it means to dig into the trash heap and build from it. In learning to live with our ever-accumulating waste, we might view it as a new kind of organic material—a circular resource that is imperfect, and messy, but plentiful and, therefore, of extreme value.
All discarded ceramics scraps were gathered from the “cemetery” at the Steel Yard in Providence, RI. Special thanks to Maxime Lefebvre for connecting us to them.