Fernández-Galiano, Luis (2000): Fire and memory

 Fernández-Galiano, Luis (2000): Fire and memory

Thus, energy injects life, processes, and transformations into the inanimate world of matter, and thus into the world of architecture. We are accustomed to thinking of the latter exclusively in terms of physical, mute, immutable objects; architects themselves like to photograph their buildings unfinished, silent and empty. It could be said that architecture is concerned solely with material forms, cold and intangible, situated beyond time.

Partly responsible for this vision of architecture, this image of it that we conserve (and language and its polysemy betray us here), is precisely the dictatorship of the eye over other organs of perception. But another, perhaps more important factor is the scandalous absence of energy considerations in architectural analysis and criticism

The irruption of energy in the universe of architecture smashes its crystalline images, shakes its mute silhouette and gives it a definitive place in the field of processes and life Architecture can then be thought of as a transformation of the material environment by changing living beings, an artifact continuously altered by use and circumstance, in constant degradation and repair before the aggression of time, permanently perishing and renewing itself.

 

The building as an exosomatic artifact. A process containing processes.

Architecture can be understood as  a material organización that regulates and brings order to energy flows; and, simultaneously and inseparably, as an energetic organization that stabilizes and maintains material forms.

 

Thus energy is installed in the heart of architecture in two ways: through the energy consumption of buildings (or more accurately, of the building’s users) in thermal regulation, water heating, lighting, etc., and through the energy needed to organize, modify, and repair the built domain. In other words: through the energy consumed by the processes that the building houses, and through the energy consumed by the process that the building itself is. We shall call the former an energy of maintenance, and the latter an energy of construction.

 

The thermal space of the bonfire is no less architectural than the visual space of the hut.

 Energy brings architecture into the world of processes and life. But it also bestows architecture with consumption, fugacity, and irreversible time.

This identity between the mother and the house has been expressed by Milosz in two tense lines:

I say Mother. And my thoughts are of you, oh, House.

House of the lovely dark summers of my childhood.

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There is a certain commutability between matter and energy that resides in the fact that wood is potentially as much a construction material as a combustible substance. This is precisely our concern now. If previously the emphasis was on the complementarity and simultaneity of the material and energetic strategies, now emphasis goes to the commutability and interchangeability of the two, Construction and fire, matter and energy are complementary and interchangeable.

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There is no transformation, irreversible change, or mutation without energy (…) Only energy transforms matter; only fire transforms matter; only fire transforms material. As the insignia of old chemists said, ignis mutat res (…)

The clockwork sun and the unpredictable fire

Cosmologies and cosmogonies

The two basic methods of environmental intervention have already been presented: on one hand is the regulation of free energy through construction; on the other is the exploitation of accumulated energy through combustion. We have seen how construction needs energy in order to be carried out (…)