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Commendation

Going Beyond the Layers of the Facade. After Performance, Towards Care

Part 2 Dissertation 2023
Giulia Rosa
Architectural Association London | UK
On the 14th of June 2017, a fire arose from the fourth floor of the Grenfell Tower, a 24 storey public housing block. Within 15 minutes the whole facade was on fire, trapping and intoxicating people inside of the building. 72 people were killed and 151 homes were destroyed, while for many unrepairable damage was caused. Grenfell’s story sits between a social and relational problematic of governing public housing and a tragic performance of deceitful layers. Through the essay, the facade is disassembled in the mapping of actors and factors involved, while metaphorically crossing the strata of the building to learn from what happened in and behind its section. In cases like the Grenfell Tower, the material disintegration of the facade becomes the metaphor for the immaterial dissolution of the notion of care in housing. The essay aims at exhibiting what can’t be read in the straight lines of an architectural detail, challenging the present incommunicability between care and performance while presenting care as the ultimate layer to performance. The binary understanding of performance and matter solely loaded in science and certainties is questioned in order to define a space for an understanding of immaterial concerns as design tools. From the toxicity of matter an immaterial tangibility that questions morality in practice emerges.


Tutor(s)
Mercedes Rodrigo GarcíA
2023
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