ABSTRACT
Today, much of the stuff in our everyday lives is discarded and demolished, ranging from accessories to automobiles and bottles to buildings. Companies like Controlled Demolition Incorporated operate around the world, capitalizing on consumer culture and an economy of built-in obsolescence. The modernist desires of wiping the world slate clean to work with an unobstructed tabula rasa is outright irresponsible given our changing climate. “Built Environment as Palimpsest” advocates for taking on the tabula scripta—a perpetually rewritten landscape—allowing us to excavate our built environments as ever-changing palimpsests of piled pieces that reference and respect past, present, and future civilizations. Meditations on spolia, a multivalent subject that is disinclined to easy definition and resistant to a coherent field of study, provides the historical framework through which the presented design ideas, approaches, and interventions are considered. Broadly speaking, spolia is a form of appropriation that involves the reuse of physical materials. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 500 million tonnes of construction and demolition debris is produced annually in the United States. “Built Environment as Palimpsest” presents a collection of design ideas, by both architecture activists and students, who explore methods of dis-assembly, re-assembly, recycling, adaptive reuse, and preservation of the built environment.
