tango ergo sum.

INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED ARCHITECTURE OF CATALONIA, BARCELONA, SPAIN   | Autumn 2020
FACULTY: Andrés Flajszer

Photo Essay || Digital Photography

Human presence in the landscape, and our presence within ourselves, constantly manifests through physical touch. We touch, therefore we are here. We transform ourselves and our landscape into our image. Our intention is most often to work against entropy: organizing, holding together, and simplifying multiplicities into a homogenous whole.

Especially in Valldaura, landscape is a story of human intention and manipulation. It is a centuries-long tale of sorting, removing, stacking, and restacking. Walls crumble and we repair them with repurposed stones and bricks. Weeds arise and we collect and compost them, in order to cultivate heaps of produce. We selectively remove trees, stack, dry, sort, and process them, while new saplings grow in their place. Much of our day is spent amassing piles of sameness, giving the appearance of order and control, even if nature has other ideas.

Within its walls Valldaura’s residents are constantly building a fortress against entropy to regularize interior climate and function. This is a continuous process that brings with it some aspect of disarray, and is never finished.

In the process of self-organization, we are constantly under construction and never afraid to get dirty, especially if it means celebrating the diversity of life within our walls and biosphere. We have dirt under our nails, and we’re ready to collect, order, get messy and grow.