Siméon Gonnet

Demolition has always been considered the discreet flip side of architecture. It builds nothing, invents nothing, merely offering buildings a spectacular end and the promise of rebirth in their place. But as confidential as its history has been, this activity is now in crisis. In our present day, sensitive to the theme of collapse, there is no longer any justification for continuing this industry of rubble; for the prodigious waste that each of its tasks costs us. We must demolish demolition, reform the instrument of reset, condemn the slogan of a virgin land that this solvent of our tenacious buildings promised us. From now on, we deconstruct, we recycle, we reuse. To contribute to a happy stagnation of our terrestrial habitat, nothing more must perish in the ballet of cranes and the concert of pickaxes. Yet never has the obsolescence of our existing structures been so palpable as in the cocktail of disasters and pollution that surround our current affairs. Never has the need to rebuild everything seemed so urgent as in the health and social conditions heralded by pandemics, wars and climate change. Finally, never has our heritage seemed so heavy as in the nascent ruins of the century of modernity. It is not easy to imagine a world that would no longer be guided in the future by this desire to do better, to systematise ‘added value’ as a condition of ‘building’. This research will raise the hypothesis that we are not done with demolition. Not that the future can be summed up as a field of ruins, but rather that we need to understand how demolition mediates the uncertainties surrounding the future of contemporary territories. It is also about realising how the recent history of architecture has contributed to obscuring the values of a thousand years of knowledge of how to dismantle, which cannot be reduced to a few acts of destruction. History, as we shall see, needs demolition, and it is for this reason that today, demolition needs a history.