Construction and dismantling N51-113

• Main Author: Komatsu, Toshihiro, 1966-
• Other Authors: Edward Levine.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2012
• Subjects: Architecture.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/75624

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1999. === Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-55). === From February 1997 to January 1999, I was provided with a small office N51 - 113 on the ground floor of building N51 . In the spring of 1998 I undertook the construction of a full scale inverted replica of this office as a free standing pavilion extracted from the body of its architectural context. This pavilion, situated at the entrance gate of the courtyard of building N51 was carefully replicated using identical materials and exact scale for every detail. By inverting the walls of my office, interior and exterior surfaces are exactly turned inside-out. In the fall of 1998 the pavilion was completed and inaugurated unobtrusively to the inhabitants of its immediate neighbourhood. Soon after completion, weather conditions began the gradual deterioration of the exposed drywall of the pavilion's walls, this decreased the organization of the pavilion, while increasing entropy of the inverted room, as it was extracted from the body of building N51, and exposed, allowing the inevitable process of decay. I realized that every detail event in this process, of construction and entropy, has aesthetic meaning. My subsequent dismantling of this pavilion addresses the issue of time and temporality within the processes of appearing and disappearing. In late January 1999 I carefully dismantled the pavilion piece by piece, reversing the construction process from the end to the beginning, completing the cycle. Construction and Dismantling mirror each other's temporal sequence. === by Toshihiro Komatsu. === S.M.