Architecture Commons^™

Letter On "Urban Mining", Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Urban mining” (in “Source material”) may be a new term, but we have a long history of repurposing layers of a building that has become obsolete. Ise Shrine in Japan is rebuilt every 20 years; each time, dismantled columns, beams, and other components are bestowed upon other shrines, which reuse them in high veneration. The Coliseum had been a mine for stone and metal since the fourth century, and in 1452, Pope Nicholas V, intending to rebuild Rome, reportedly removed 2,522 cartloads damaged by an earlier earthquake. The ancient arena’s travertine can be found in buildings throughout the city.

In …

Untimely Thinking Of Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This is the foreword to the two-volume collection of essays by the eminent architectural historian Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez titled, Timely Meditations: Select Essays on Architecture (2016). It examines his work on hermeneutics to reconsider "innovation" in architecture by privileging architecture’s performance of cultural orientation over innovation for its own sake. This shifts attention from action based on information to a hermeneutic position that draws on a less articulate background.