THE ARCHIVE: THE STORY OF AN ARCHITECT AND A SCHOLAR IN AN ECOTOPIAN PANDEMIC

On the discovery of a diary written by an Architect within the ARCHIVE, the Scholar dissects the struggling dynamic between people, nature, and architecture to decipher the fine line between the symbiotic and parasitic. The diary depicts the journey of the Architect into the woods, to escape the terrors of the pandemic. Here, he stumbles across a pine tree, which becomes the object of his obsession. He constructs a home around the tree but in doing so constrains it, sparking the destructive tendency between architecture and nature. In his maddened state fueled by isolation, grief and paranoia, he is driven to dig down to intervene, creating cavernous spaces which mirror his inner turmoil. The Scholar challenges the psychology of the Architect by intervening in an abandoned train station he once designed. Trees constrained within the roof since abandonment have become infected by parasitic strangler figs, characterized by their aerial tendrils which suffocate and envelop the host trees. A process of decay which benefits local wildlife. He transforms the confinement of the trees to create cradles and envisions the building as a device to humble people encouraging them to take on the role of observers in a building befalling curated decay.