James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Projects
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)
  • 2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)

Mankind’s fascination with historic artefacts provides the necessary framework to allow us to cope with our collective existential fears – to comprehend the magnitude and terror of the natural world. Together they provide a codified, iconographic language which both comforts and instructs us in ways to behave, both alone and together. Throughout history knowledge has been chronicled, transmitted and distilled in the form of myths and narratives embedded within architectural fabric.

We perceive this image [an archival image, Fig. 1, which acted as instigator for the project] as one without scale. It is a ruined landscape; an assemblage of built components that have been bricolaged into a supra-structure and laid over an allegorical map of the city. Just as the beatified bodies of Saints were often dispersed and elevated into individually meaningful fragments of a sacred whole, this manipulated ground acts as a reliquary (a cadavre exquis of sorts) – at once a container and a processional route that gathers the dead structure of the city and holds it in suspension, making room for future development.

Fig. 1 Object from the collection of the Frac Centre (unattributed), presented as the project catalyst

Clearance

Cities must exist in a perpetual state of renewal. Through a process of erasure and fragmentation—in which existing structures are demolished, removed from their sites, and repositioned in landfill—we envisage new possibilities. The allegorical map has been replaced by a grid in Image 2: an incoming city plan which exposes the latent capacity of the city to accommodate new and old structures alike. Imbued with meaning and narratives unto their own these fragments are repositioned and collated to form the reliquary, and a boundary to a new clearing. Through the reconfiguration of these dislocated structural elements—divorced from any original performative function—their inherent value, structural and otherwise, is resurrected as a ruin.

Fig 2. Genesis (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Extraction is a geological process. The Earth is in a continual process of exhuming and stratifying, pulling apart and colliding with itself. The reconfiguration of excavated material (design) is a pursuit which mankind has utilised above all other activities; we have, for centuries, systematically taken from the ground, translated that which we wrest into objects of use, before burying it once again.

Fig 3. Metamorphosis (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Reconfiguration might also be read as manufacture. From raw material we make tools to create more of the same – once it is taken from the ground and imbued with meaning beyond its material value, it is changed beyond former utility. This gradual and ever expanding repertoire of objects, forms and tools represents a fascination with evolution – be it of ourselves, the spaces in which we reside, or the environments that we distance ourselves from. The larger desire to manage and configure the natural world—by carving, enclosing and overlaying—is ongoing and, to a certain degree, inevitable.

Fig 4. Translation (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

The translation material hewn or extracted from the ground—be it stone, clay or ore—is an occupation which is being continuously refined. Two dimensional surfaces bely the three dimensional world, and our instruments of measurement allow us to scale the environment in order to imagine and inscribe new configurations of and for it. The act of translation mediates between the virtual sphere and its implications for the real world.

Fig 5. Birth (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

The built world is manifested through the strain and labour of both man and machine. The core elements of architecture—a wall, a roof, an arch, or a column—are able to orchestrate the natural environment and bend it into a comfortable, useful human habitat. Once an idea has been conceived, refined and made buildable the process of nurturing it into reality begins.

Fig 6. Life (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Once a collection of elements have been choreographed into structure, the resultant spaces are occupied. The building, therefore, is subsumed into the fabric of a city and threaded into its civic and quotidian life. It begins to facilitate coexistence, exclusion, privacy, and the public life of individuals.

Fig 7. Death (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

As with all things, a lifespan is finite – and often expedited by poor design (consider the conscious act of planned obsolescence). Fatigue, volatility, and irrelevance lead to collapse (a natural end), while others are purposefully put to death: an execution which, by nature of its scale, demands both patience and preparation. The elements of the building’s design and construction are dissolved before they are salvaged and reclaimed.

Fig 8. Procession (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

All life ends ceremoniously. In the case of a building, one configuration has come to pass and another begins; processes of fragmentation and translocation disperse the elements which once comprised a whole. Most are taken to landfill to be fed back into the ground while some are repurposed. Both fates are symbolic: the act of carrying from one place to another should be read as a ritual.

Fig 9. Archaeology (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Methodically ordered from a chaos of rubble (landfill), individual elements begin to speak of their former use. Set upon and aside from an abstracted topography, they are realigned to a grid in order to find clarity. The passage of time imbues even the most mundane objects with meaning beyond their function or their form, and it is here that we find interest. They represent something beyond our immediate understanding of the world around us.

Fig 10. Reliquary (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

This manufactured landscape entwines multiple worlds into one. As an edifice of repurposed relics, this fragmented and arbitrary terrain becomes a single codified heterogenous landscape. It is a museum of redundant matter scavenged, salvaged, positioned and resurrected as a ruin.

This project was exhibited in Rome and Orléans as part of Misunderstandings, an exhibition which sought to address the Frac Centre’s archive of experimental architecture in order to reflect on the operative value of museums and collections for contemporary discourse and architectural practice.

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James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • ✶ Joar Nango: Girjegumpi, Venice2023
  • ✶ WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, London2022
  • ✶ Mira Bergh × Josefin Zachrisson: Utomhusverket2022
  • ✶ The Limits of Our World: LARP and Design2022
  • Solicited: Proposals2021
  • Studio Ossidiana: Utomhusverket2021
  • WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, Stockholm2020
  • Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron + Brunnsparken2019
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture2019
  • The Craft of Swedish Videogame Design2019
  • Petra Gipp and Mikael Olsson; Sigurd Lewerentz – Freestanding2018
  • Space Popular: Value in the Virtual2018
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • ASMR, An Exhibition Trailer2022
  • Watch & Chill 2.0: Streaming Senses2022
  • ASMRology2021
  • Plug-in Poesi2020
  • Interdependence: Stockholm and pandemia2020
  • Future Architecture Rooms2020
  • SOFT GOSSIP2020
  • Mukbang Veneziano2020
  • Körper2019
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Boxen at ArkDes2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
III.Publications
  • ✶ softspot2021
  • Living on Water2017
  • Elemental Living2016
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
IV.Speaking
  • ✶ Scaffold #612022
  • Salons, The New Architecture School2022
  • Protagonist of the Erotic: A Bed2022
  • OAT Academy, Curating Architecture2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: An Island2021
  • A Future for Exhibitions2021
  • Future Architecture CEx2020 Focus Talks2020
  • Modevisningar är den flyktigaste formen av arkitektur2018
  • Exhibition Models2017
V.Writing
  • Wang & Söderström: Royal Chambers2023
  • Lisa Tan: Dodge and/or Burn2023
  • Luki Essender: Of Yous2023
  • Studio Ossidiana on the Sentimental Scale of the City2022
  • A Strange Sort of Weight2021
  • What’s Mine Is Theirs: an interview with Max Lamb2020
  • ✶ Screen Glow Sedation2020
  • No Time to Stand and Stare2020
  • On Norra Tornen2020
  • ✶ Don’t Fear a Snowflake2020
  • In Riga, A Conference On Architecture and Migration2019
  • On Practical Futurology2019
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto2019
  • Making Believe with Charlap Hyman & Herrero2019
  • ✶ To Speak As If In Capital Letters2019
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2018
  • ✶ Virgil Abloh, Editor in Brief2018
  • A Weak Monument2018
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Villa Edstrand2018
  • On the Cruising Pavilion2018
  • A Diary of Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Show2018
  • ✶ The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.2018
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • ✶ On Liquid Modernity2017
  • ✶ #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2023
Projects
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary) 2016
  • for CAMPO / Frac Centre with OMMX
Back

Mankind’s fascination with historic artefacts provides the necessary framework to allow us to cope with our collective existential fears – to comprehend the magnitude and terror of the natural world. Together they provide a codified, iconographic language which both comforts and instructs us in ways to behave, both alone and together. Throughout history knowledge has been chronicled, transmitted and distilled in the form of myths and narratives embedded within architectural fabric.

We perceive this image [an archival image, Fig. 1, which acted as instigator for the project] as one without scale. It is a ruined landscape; an assemblage of built components that have been bricolaged into a supra-structure and laid over an allegorical map of the city. Just as the beatified bodies of Saints were often dispersed and elevated into individually meaningful fragments of a sacred whole, this manipulated ground acts as a reliquary (a cadavre exquis of sorts) – at once a container and a processional route that gathers the dead structure of the city and holds it in suspension, making room for future development.

Fig. 1 Object from the collection of the Frac Centre (unattributed), presented as the project catalyst

Clearance

Cities must exist in a perpetual state of renewal. Through a process of erasure and fragmentation—in which existing structures are demolished, removed from their sites, and repositioned in landfill—we envisage new possibilities. The allegorical map has been replaced by a grid in Image 2: an incoming city plan which exposes the latent capacity of the city to accommodate new and old structures alike. Imbued with meaning and narratives unto their own these fragments are repositioned and collated to form the reliquary, and a boundary to a new clearing. Through the reconfiguration of these dislocated structural elements—divorced from any original performative function—their inherent value, structural and otherwise, is resurrected as a ruin.

Fig 2. Genesis (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Extraction is a geological process. The Earth is in a continual process of exhuming and stratifying, pulling apart and colliding with itself. The reconfiguration of excavated material (design) is a pursuit which mankind has utilised above all other activities; we have, for centuries, systematically taken from the ground, translated that which we wrest into objects of use, before burying it once again.

Fig 3. Metamorphosis (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Reconfiguration might also be read as manufacture. From raw material we make tools to create more of the same – once it is taken from the ground and imbued with meaning beyond its material value, it is changed beyond former utility. This gradual and ever expanding repertoire of objects, forms and tools represents a fascination with evolution – be it of ourselves, the spaces in which we reside, or the environments that we distance ourselves from. The larger desire to manage and configure the natural world—by carving, enclosing and overlaying—is ongoing and, to a certain degree, inevitable.

Fig 4. Translation (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

The translation material hewn or extracted from the ground—be it stone, clay or ore—is an occupation which is being continuously refined. Two dimensional surfaces bely the three dimensional world, and our instruments of measurement allow us to scale the environment in order to imagine and inscribe new configurations of and for it. The act of translation mediates between the virtual sphere and its implications for the real world.

Fig 5. Birth (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

The built world is manifested through the strain and labour of both man and machine. The core elements of architecture—a wall, a roof, an arch, or a column—are able to orchestrate the natural environment and bend it into a comfortable, useful human habitat. Once an idea has been conceived, refined and made buildable the process of nurturing it into reality begins.

Fig 6. Life (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Once a collection of elements have been choreographed into structure, the resultant spaces are occupied. The building, therefore, is subsumed into the fabric of a city and threaded into its civic and quotidian life. It begins to facilitate coexistence, exclusion, privacy, and the public life of individuals.

Fig 7. Death (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

As with all things, a lifespan is finite – and often expedited by poor design (consider the conscious act of planned obsolescence). Fatigue, volatility, and irrelevance lead to collapse (a natural end), while others are purposefully put to death: an execution which, by nature of its scale, demands both patience and preparation. The elements of the building’s design and construction are dissolved before they are salvaged and reclaimed.

Fig 8. Procession (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

All life ends ceremoniously. In the case of a building, one configuration has come to pass and another begins; processes of fragmentation and translocation disperse the elements which once comprised a whole. Most are taken to landfill to be fed back into the ground while some are repurposed. Both fates are symbolic: the act of carrying from one place to another should be read as a ritual.

Fig 9. Archaeology (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

Methodically ordered from a chaos of rubble (landfill), individual elements begin to speak of their former use. Set upon and aside from an abstracted topography, they are realigned to a grid in order to find clarity. The passage of time imbues even the most mundane objects with meaning beyond their function or their form, and it is here that we find interest. They represent something beyond our immediate understanding of the world around us.

Fig 10. Reliquary (© OMMX / James Taylor-Foster)

This manufactured landscape entwines multiple worlds into one. As an edifice of repurposed relics, this fragmented and arbitrary terrain becomes a single codified heterogenous landscape. It is a museum of redundant matter scavenged, salvaged, positioned and resurrected as a ruin.

This project was exhibited in Rome and Orléans as part of Misunderstandings, an exhibition which sought to address the Frac Centre’s archive of experimental architecture in order to reflect on the operative value of museums and collections for contemporary discourse and architectural practice.
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