Drift­ing Plates

The con­stant grind­ing of tec­ton­ic plates her­alds both trans­for­ma­tion and catastrophe.

The aware­ness of inevitable destruc­tion, often por­trayed through the metaphor of ruin, is inbuilt in our build­ing cul­ture yet rarely acknowl­edged. Archi­tec­ture nego­ti­ates the dialec­tic between con­struc­tion and destruc­tion, it is exis­ten­tial to this process yet elu­sive. It is man­i­fest on the build­ing site which is both a tec­ton­ic site of con­tes­ta­tion, adver­sar­i­al in nature, and a forum for col­lab­o­ra­tion, where fine­ly bal­anced tol­er­ances are quan­ti­fied and deter­mined. Archi­tec­ture sits uneasi­ly between our focus on the build­ing as a dis­crete object and a search for a cul­tur­al con­sen­sus of how we might design and build in a broad­er soci­etal con­text. Tec­ton­ics, in rela­tion to build­ing prac­tice and the prag­mat­ics of con­struc­tion, as Ken­neth Framp­ton has long argued,[1] chal­lenge the role of the archi­tect call­ing for a crit­i­cal resis­tance to the forces of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and for the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive mod­els of pro­duc­tion. Such resis­tance has been man­i­fest in a turn towards the ethno­graph­ic and to the crit­i­cal study of ver­nac­u­lar means of build­ing as archi­tects have sought to recon­nect, at moments in the 20^th cen­tu­ry, with traces of pre-indus­tri­al behav­iours and means of pro­duc­tion that were evi­dent in what Super­stu­dio called ​‘extra-urban mate­r­i­al cul­tures’.[2] Syn­chron­i­cal­ly the tec­ton­ics of drift­ing con­ti­nen­tal plates, a the­o­ry first con­tro­ver­sial­ly pro­posed in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry by Ger­man geol­o­gist and explor­er Alfred Wegen­er [ 1 ], which result in peri­od­ic cat­a­stro­phes and in turn longer term geo­log­i­cal changes have been cat­a­lysts in new direc­tions in archi­tec­tur­al think­ing. Wegener’s artic­u­la­tion of the under­ly­ing dynam­ics of tec­ton­ic plates had offered an expla­na­tion for the dis­junct bio­geo­log­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion of present-day life found on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents but hav­ing sim­i­lar ances­tors. This set a new con­text for think­ing about tools that can be seen in the anthro­pol­o­gist George Kubler’s influ­en­tial writ­ings on the ​‘Shape of Time’. Writ­ing on the his­to­ry of things Kubler brought drew atten­tion away from the work of the indi­vid­ual artist to every­day objects and arte­facts which, he argued, bore wit­ness to process­es of inno­va­tion, repli­ca­tion and muta­tion that were in con­tin­u­ous con­ver­sa­tion over time.

Exam­ples of this new focus can be seen in response to tec­ton­ic events in the work of Japan­ese archi­tect and ethno­g­ra­ph­er Wajiro Kon fol­low­ing the Great Kan­to earth­quake of 1923, also in the work of COMU in response to the Tohoko earth­quake and tsuna­mi of 2011, and, from a slow­er geo­log­i­cal per­spec­tive of rock for­ma­tion, seis­mic uplifts and ero­sion, in the work of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and artist Mario Cresci in Mat­era, South­ern Italy in the 1970s. In each case it will be argued that pro­gram­mat­ic impuls­es gen­er­at­ed by intense tec­ton­ic activ­i­ty have been the cat­a­lyst for the devel­op­ment of new tools to re-posi­tion archi­tec­tur­al dis­course through direct engage­ment with local inhab­i­tants and the mate­ri­als and uten­sils with which they fash­ion their lives.

In the con­text of our con­tem­po­rary dri­ve to the dig­i­tal it is instruc­tive to draw dis­tinc­tions between the pro­duc­tion of archi­tec­ture through the pri­ma­cy of image that the all-encom­pass­ing lens of the com­put­er screen empow­ers and the ethno­graph­ic means by which ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­tures have tra­di­tion­al­ly been realised through what I will call tec­ton­ic tools. The tool is an imple­ment, an every­day object which, when it is fash­ioned, adapt­ed and used, becomes indi­vid­u­alised and bespoke. As such the tool, which typ­i­cal­ly embod­ies the total­is­ing eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal forces of labour with­in build­ing, revers­es its role enabling indi­vid­ual cre­ativ­i­ty and facil­i­tat­ing an alter­na­tive approach to soci­ety. In this con­text it is note­wor­thy how depic­tions of tools and craft process­es in Diderot’s 18^th cen­tu­ry enlight­en­ment project, the ​‘Ency­lo­pe­die’, gave iden­ti­ty to and ​“gal­va­nized a new social pow­er base which ulti­mate­ly led to the destruc­tion of old val­ues and the cre­ation of new ones”.[3] Tec­ton­ic tools are cul­tur­al arte­facts imbued with the imprint of their indi­vid­ual mak­ers which have been adopt­ed in archi­tec­tur­al dis­course often as the means to resist the increas­ing impact of indus­tri­alised pro­duc­tion, becom­ing sym­bols for an alter­na­tive future. This resis­tance was apt­ly framed in the writ­ings of Ivan Illich who argued for tools for con­vivi­al­i­ty that would stand for the oppo­site of indus­tri­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and fos­ter ​“autonomous and cre­ative inter­course among per­sons and the inter­course of per­sons with their envi­ron­ment”.[4] For Illich tools have a polit­i­cal dimen­sion and implic­it in his call for a ​“retool­ing of soci­ety” is his argu­ment that the notion of tool, which is intrin­sic to social rela­tion­ships, extends beyond the imple­ment itself to encom­pass com­plex sys­tems of infra­struc­ture and inter­change. Retool­ing of soci­ety to pro­mote alter­na­tives to its reliance on indus­tri­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty called for a new under­stand­ing of the tool. This expand­ed def­i­n­i­tion, where­by the tool became the vehi­cle for spec­u­la­tion and exper­i­men­ta­tion with new modes of self-organ­i­sa­tion, can be seen, in the late 1960s in the pages of the ​‘Whole Earth Cat­a­logue’. In the ear­ly 1970s the Ital­ian rad­i­cal edu­ca­tion project ​‘Glob­al Tools’ sought to build an anti-dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an space to reflect on arts and crafts in an anti-urban con­text [ 2 ] [ 3 ], while Superstudio’s ​‘Project Zeno’[5] and ​‘Extra-Urban Mate­r­i­al Cul­ture’ focussed specif­i­cal­ly on the agrar­i­an and ver­nac­u­lar and the poten­tial for tools and hand craft­ed objects in form­ing alter­na­tive modes of oper­a­tion.[6] Enzo Mari’s ​‘Pro­pos­ta per un’Autoprogettazione’ explored the poten­tials of tools for ​‘self design’ to chal­lenge the design indus­try when he pub­lished instruc­tions for ordi­nary peo­ple to build his fur­ni­ture designs them­selves with sim­ple mate­ri­als and hand tools.

In ​‘Tools for Con­vivi­al­i­ty’, pub­lished in1974, Ivan Illich put for­ward the notion that con­vivi­al­i­ty rep­re­sent­ed the ​“oppo­site of indus­tri­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty” and was a con­di­tion of ​“autonomous and cre­ative inter­course among per­sons and the inter­course of per­sons with their envi­ron­ment”.[7] He argued that if an indi­vid­ual relates him­self to his soci­ety through the use of tools that he active­ly mas­ters these hand tools would ​“give each per­son who uses them the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty to enrich the envi­ron­ment with the fruits of his or her vision”. Illich made the dis­tinc­tion between con­vivial and manip­u­la­to­ry tools, which are restrict­ed by insti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments and which ​“con­sti­tute an abuse and changes the nature of the tool…as the nature of the knife is changed by its abuse for mur­der”.[8]

Con­trary to this, and mark­ing a pro­found break with the ethno­graph­ic tra­di­tion, Vilem Flusser’s read­ing of the pho­to­graph as a tech­ni­cal image gen­er­at­ed by the func­tion­al appa­ra­tus of the cam­era account­ed for a loss of human agency that tools embody. By expos­ing the pro­grammed nature of the pho­to­graph Flusser revealed a ten­sion between the photographer’s cre­ative goals and the camera’s pro­gram­ming that char­ac­teris­es the dilem­ma of the tec­ton­ic tool. He describes the shift in code struc­tures from his­tor­i­cal think­ing which he argues is lin­ear and root­ed in alpha­bet­ic writ­ing to the con­di­tion of post-his­to­ry where non­lin­ear, pix­e­lat­ed tech­ni­cal images pre­dom­i­nate. In a world dom­i­nat­ed by the appa­ra­tus a crit­i­cal resis­tance offers ​“the last form of mean­ing­ful rev­o­lu­tion: reclaim­ing sig­nif­i­cance and free­dom through con­scious engage­ment with tech­nol­o­gy”.[9]

Seismic Tools

The Great Kan­to Earth­quake of Sep­tem­ber 1923 occurred when the Philip­pine Sea Plate sub­duct­ed beneath the Okhot­sk Plate along the Saga­mi Trough in Saga­mi Bay, with an epi­cen­ter 60 kilo­me­ters south­west of Tokyo. Over the next ten days there were 1,200 after­shocks across the region. More than half of Tokyo and most of Yoko­hama were dev­as­tat­ed, mas­sive firestorms spread cre­at­ing chaos and lead­ing to vast num­bers of casu­al­ties; approx­i­mate­ly 2.5 mil­lion peo­ple were left home­less [ 4 ] [ 5 ]. In the after­math of the destruc­tion vig­i­lante groups formed tar­get­ing Kore­an and Chi­nese migrants, an esti­mat­ed 6,000 Kore­ans were mur­dered. The home­less gath­ered in large open spaces such as Ueno Park and the Impe­r­i­al Palace grounds. The author­i­ties con­struct­ed tem­po­rary bar­racks, many erect­ed makeshift shacks cre­at­ing vast shan­ty towns with stores and rudi­men­ta­ry businesses.

Wajiro Kon, pro­fes­sor of archi­tec­ture at Wase­da Uni­ver­si­ty had, since 1917, been sur­vey­ing tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese farm­hous­es in rur­al areas. In 1922 Kon and Odauchi Michi­toshi were com­mis­sioned by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment of Korea to study vil­lages, homes, equip­ment and cus­toms in sev­er­al regions. Fol­low­ing the earth­quake Kon began vis­it­ing areas where the home­less con­gre­gat­ed to pho­to­graph and sketch the bar­racks. His record­ing of the cir­cum­stances that peo­ple found them­selves fol­low­ing the dis­as­ter devel­oped into drawn sur­veys of the lives of the dis­pos­sessed, the peo­ple them­selves and the objects, fur­ni­ture, uten­sils and tools of their new­found sit­u­a­tion [ 6 ]. As busi­ness­es began to appear amongst the bar­racks Kon and his col­leagues found­ed the Bar­rack Dec­o­ra­tion Com­pa­ny with stu­dents of design and the arts in order to artis­ti­cal­ly dec­o­rate the bar­racks. Kon’s inter­ests in the urban phe­nom­e­na that he was observ­ing led to sur­veys of the mores and cus­toms of the Gin­za dis­trict [ 7 ]. He lat­er wrote of this ethno­graph­ic response to the changed cir­cum­stances that he was wit­ness­ing as an attempt to ​“devel­op an anthro­po­log­i­cal method in order to record and exam­ine com­par­a­tive­ly our con­tem­po­rary mate­r­i­al cul­ture” so that ​“indi­vid­u­als should be able to dis­tin­guish society’s diverse per­son­ae, and the trends of mate­r­i­al cul­ture, in order to pre­pare for their own way of liv­ing, unham­pered by com­pul­sions to imi­tate”.[10] Kon extend­ed his sur­veys, which he called Mod­er­nol­o­gy stud­ies[11], across Tokyo. These stud­ies of urban phe­nom­e­na focussed on his inter­est in the rapid­ly chang­ing urban space and people’s lifestyles. Kon cre­at­ed maps show­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of stores, maps com­bin­ing sta­tis­ti­cal data and draw­ings of peo­ple. The graph­ics were made by stage painters and oth­er artists. Kuroishi Izu­mi has high­light­ed Modernology’s empha­sis on the details of every­day life and how eco­nom­ic dif­fer­ence influ­enced dif­fer­ent pat­terns of habi­ta­tion, empha­sis­ing Kon’s inter­est in ​“rela­tion­ships between peo­ple and things and space”.[12] For Lisa Hsieh Kon ​“con­sid­ered his work archae­ol­o­gy, but car­ried out in the ruins of a present-day city”,[13] she has argued that Kon’s stud­ies of inte­ri­ors showed an increas­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese chat­tels and import­ed mod­ern nov­el­ties such as gas stoves and refrig­er­a­tors. As such Mod­er­nol­o­gy rep­re­sent­ed a call to aware­ness and ulti­mate­ly a means of resis­tance to the inevitabil­i­ty of rapid­ly chang­ing Japan. Kon Wojiro’s response to the pro­vi­sion­al arrange­ments fol­low­ing the earth­quake crys­tallised a moment of trans­for­ma­tion in Japan­ese soci­ety. His focus on the dai­ly habits of sur­vivors forced to inno­vate and adapt to change high­light­ed their depen­dence on the objects and tools of every­day life as they reshaped their tem­po­rary homes. The depth of Kon’s ethno­graph­ic gaze brought a new focus to the minu­ti­ae of dai­ly life and the agency and con­trol that the dis­placed urban mass­es exert­ed on their imme­di­ate urban envi­ron­ment [ 7 ] [ 8 ]. Obser­va­tion and focus on the real­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing con­di­tions became tools for under­stand­ing how peo­ple adapt to change, in this case to dynam­ic tec­ton­ic dis­rup­tions, and how their reliance on domes­tic objects and uten­sils were inte­gral to their inte­ri­or lives as they con­front­ed change and a grow­ing mate­ri­al­ism in society. 

The merg­ing of ethno­graph­ic and art prac­tices deployed by Kon and his col­lab­o­ra­tors was to influ­ence Japan­ese spa­tial prac­tices in dif­fer­ent forms in the lat­er 20^th cen­tu­ry. It resur­faced in the con­cep­tu­al art of Neo-Dadaist Gen­pei Akasegawa, who had stud­ied Mod­er­nol­o­gy with Kon, in his ​‘Hyper­art: Thomas­son’ project. Akasegawa in turn, influ­enced Tokyo-based archi­tects Ate­lier Bow­Wow whose prac­tice embed­ded an ethno­graph­ic lens into their sur­veys of the banal­i­ty and strange found phe­nom­e­na of post bub­ble Tokyo of the 1990s which Yoshi­hara Tsukamo­to has called ​“shame­less-ness” and ​“da-me archi­tec­ture” (“no-good archi­tec­ture”).[14] Akasegawa dis­cov­ered the first Thomas­son, named after the leg­endary Amer­i­can base­ball play­er Gary Thomas­son who was trans­ferred in 1972 at great expence by the Nip­pon League only to fail dis­as­trous­ly with count­less strike­outs. The ​‘Yot­suya Stair­case’ was a func­tion­less exte­ri­or stair­case built against the side of a build­ing which did not have a door or any means of enter­ing the build­ing. The stair­case, a land­ing approached by two flights of steps with a handrail, was effec­tive­ly pur­pose­less and use­less. Akasegawa was puz­zled by his dis­cov­ery, ​“every­thing in our cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety has to have a pur­pose. So where does that leave this par­tic­u­lar stair­case? Could you even call it a stair­case? Of course you can’t”.[15] Akasegawa con­clud­ed that the stair­case could only be a work of art shaped like a stair­case for which he coined the term ​‘Hyper­art’. The dis­cov­ery and nam­ing of the ​‘Yot­suya Stair­case’ led to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of mul­ti­ple exam­ples of redun­dant and pur­pose­less exam­ples of Hyper­art across Japan. The Thomas­son Obser­va­tion Soci­ety was found­ed to encour­age the pub­lic to iden­ti­fy Thomas­sons, this in turn led to the devel­op­ment of the Street Obser­va­tion Soci­ety. Draw­ing atten­tion to redun­dant archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments in the mod­ern Japan­ese city through direct obser­va­tion and record­ing Akasegawa intro­duced a method to ques­tion the dri­vers of mod­ern devel­op­ment, progress, prof­it and functionality. 

The Tohoku earth­quake and sub­se­quent tsuna­mi of 2011 occurred when the Pacif­ic plate sub­duct­ed under the Hon­shu plate. The break caused the seabed near the epi­cen­ter to rise by 24 meters and to move towards the Japan Trench by 50 meters. The tsuna­mi caused the Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi nuclear dis­as­ter, pri­mar­i­ly the melt­down of three reac­tors and the dis­charge of radioac­tive water. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of res­i­dents were evac­u­at­ed. Where­as the Great Kan­to earth­quake was piv­otal in Japan’s shift to moder­ni­ty, the Tohoko earth­quake came at a time of uncer­tain­ty amidst grow­ing aware­ness of envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe and a ques­tion­ing of the notion of progress. The dis­as­ter and sub­se­quent relief mea­sures focussed pri­mar­i­ly on large scale infra­struc­tur­al recon­struc­tion. Mean­while local res­i­dents and sur­viv­ing com­mu­ni­ties were housed in tem­po­rary bar­rack struc­tures for many years. The archi­tec­tur­al profession’s response to this dis­as­ter faced many com­plex­i­ties regard­ing pro­cure­ment, bureau­crat­ic iner­tia and an over­all mis­match of expec­ta­tions. Apoc­ryphal sto­ries tell of Japan­ese star archi­tects approach­ing local gov­ern­ment offices with offers to design build­ings only to be met with incom­pre­hen­sion and there­fore rejec­tion. Upset rather than hum­bled these archi­tects with­drew. It became appar­ent that archi­tects were not able to com­mu­ni­cate with either local inhab­i­tants who had been large­ly left out of the large scale process of recon­struc­tion or local offi­cials who were charged with admin­is­ter­ing sup­port. The sit­u­a­tion called for a recal­i­bra­tion in the ways that archi­tects could con­tribute. COMU, a prac­tice found­ed by archi­tects Shin­taro Tsu­ruo­ka and Yuko Odaira,[16] set a new exam­ple by embed­ding them­selves with local com­mu­ni­ties, liv­ing along­side them in bar­racks for a num­ber of years. This offered a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to the nor­mal­ly trans­ac­tion­al rela­tion­ships between pro­fes­sion­al and client, a process that COMU calls ​‘undis­ci­plin­ing’ which entailed estab­lish­ing the means of offer­ing skills and ser­vices direct to local com­mu­ni­ties. To do this suc­cess­ful­ly involved under­stand­ing local resources that were avail­able, seek­ing to enable local com­mu­ni­ties to make and con­struct small scale projects such as pub­lic fur­ni­ture or gar­dens [ 10 ] [ 11 ], and con­vinc­ing local gov­ern­ment to pro­vide sub­si­dies for local peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in the act of mak­ing. The Com­mu­ni­ty Fur­ni­ture Project devel­oped as COMU held over six­ty work­shops with thir­teen dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to col­lec­tive­ly design and con­struct fur­ni­ture pieces such as pub­lic bench­es. The suc­cess of the project relied on devel­op­ing skills to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, to iden­ti­fy and sit­u­ate achiev­able projects with­in the local con­text, and to encour­age par­tic­i­pants to assume own­er­ship of the mak­ing process. COMU’s prac­tice expand­ed to engage with local gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Japan and in Ban­da Aceh, Indone­sia, which had also been affect­ed by the tsuna­mi, through work­shops fos­ter­ing design skills and a refo­cussing of atten­tion from the large scale to the micro scale. Projects range from fur­ni­ture pieces and com­mu­ni­ty walks to adap­tive re-use of tsuna­mi escape build­ings, struc­tures con­struct­ed for future dis­as­ters, and a dis­used a bank. Each project is con­ceived as a ​‘mod­el action’ or cat­a­lyst for change with­in a com­mu­ni­ty. COMU’s tools are less to do with mak­ing than ​“mak­ing a way to put peo­ple togeth­er” and as such mark a shift from ethno­graph­ic and obser­va­tion­al prac­tices ini­ti­at­ed by Wajiro Kon and oth­ers towards a ques­tion­ing of the lim­its of dis­ci­plines, the appro­pri­ate­ness of polit­i­cal struc­tures at the local scale, and the pro­mo­tion of dura­tional projects that coa­lesce as social constructs.

Camera as Tool

The town of Mat­era in Basil­i­ca­ta, South­ern Italy, and its sur­round­ing land­scape is the prod­uct of slow geo­log­i­cal change along­side seis­mic activ­i­ty which has result­ed in tec­ton­ic uplifts and fault­ing that have dra­mat­i­cal­ly shaped the over­all topog­ra­phy and exposed the ter­raced land­scapes of soft cal­caren­ite rock to the Grav­ina Riv­er which carved deep canyons and ravines into the lime­stone. Caves carved into the rock have been inhab­it­ed for mil­lenia. By the late 1940s, some 15,000 res­i­dents were liv­ing in caves in the area known as the Sas­si. Poor farm­ing fam­i­lies lived along­side their live­stock enlarg­ing their homes by scrap­ing away at the soft rock. These unhealthy and extreme liv­ing con­di­tions were first pub­li­cised by Car­lo Levi in 1945 in his book ​‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’[17] and this expo­sure led to gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion result­ing in the 1952 spe­cial law for the recla­ma­tion and evac­u­a­tion of the Sas­si. All 15,000 inhab­i­tants were decant­ed into pur­pose built hous­ing blocks in a move aligned with land reforms and expro­pri­a­tion of land across the south that rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed the every­day lives of peas­ants in an attempt to calm social ten­sions. Whilst the habits and liveli­hoods of the cave dwellers were pro­found­ly affect­ed, their mate­r­i­al cul­ture, their beliefs, myths and rit­u­als, which the Marx­ist the­o­rist Anto­nio Gram­sci had referred to, in his ​‘Prison Note­books’, as ​“folk­lore and com­mon­sense”, per­sist­ed in ​“implic­it oppo­si­tion” to the dom­i­nant class cul­ture of post war Italy.[18]

Mario Cresci, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and artist, first vis­it­ed Basil­i­ca­ta in the 1967 as part of the urban­ist research group Polis, a team of soci­ol­o­gists, anthro­pol­o­gists, archi­tects and urban design­ers, who were com­mis­sioned to car­ry out a sur­vey of the town of Tri­cari­co. Cresci set­tled in Mat­era where he stayed for the next twen­ty years devel­op­ing a remark­able expand­ed art prac­tice that sought to engage with local peo­ple and their cus­toms through record­ing and doc­u­ment­ing their crafts, tex­tiles and work tools [ 12 ]. Pho­tog­ra­phy for Cresci became a means to reflect on his expe­ri­ences of the Mez­zo­giorno and to iden­ti­fy and mea­sure the cus­toms and ani­ma of the rur­al areas that were under­go­ing rapid trans­for­ma­tion. In the series Ritrat­ti Reali Cresci invit­ed mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of the same fam­i­ly to be pho­tographed in their homes hold­ing fam­i­ly pho­tos and oth­er momen­tos. Cresci invit­ed his sit­ters to work on images that he had tak­en of them at home by bring­ing them to his stu­dio. Often images were fur­ther reversed and altered to become draw­ings and art­works. In this way the tex­tures and geome­tries that Cresci derived from the land­scapes he record­ed became a dynam­ic record of change and con­ti­nu­ity. Local neigh­bours and acquain­tances are pho­tographed with the tools and objects that ground and sit­u­ate their dai­ly lives. Tools are often hand­made and per­son­alised, the carv­ing of fig­urines and minia­tures are record­ed along­side the imple­ments and wood shav­ings that were involved in the process of mak­ing [ 13 ]. The view­er is invit­ed to wit­ness traces of an alter­na­tive soci­etal mod­el that is close to Illich’s vision for con­vivi­al­i­ty, one that expos­es the hid­den struc­tures of the South and rejects a nos­tal­gic ren­der­ing of the present [ 14 ]. Cresci col­lab­o­rat­ed with local farm­ers, arti­sans and stu­dents to inves­ti­gate local his­to­ries and tra­di­tions through pho­tog­ra­phy with the ambi­tion, as Lind­say Har­ris writes, ​‘not only to learn the cus­toms, beliefs and phys­i­cal sur­round­ings that dis­tin­guished Mat­era’ but also ​‘to repo­si­tion the Mez­zo­giorno as the van­guard of con­tem­po­rary design’.[19] Cresci’s ​‘Mis­urazioni’ (mea­sure­ment) project was born of this cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tion and result­ed in the 1979 pub­li­ca­tion ​‘Mis­urazioni. Fotografia e ter­ri­to­rio’ [ 15 ]. Explor­ing rela­tion­ships between local inhab­i­tants and the objects and tools found in their homes, along­side art­works that Cresci gen­er­at­ed from this process, it can be read as a man­i­festo for car­togra­phies of place that that offer the means towards the imag­i­na­tion for an alter­na­tive future in a deeply con­flict­ed society.

If the under­ly­ing forces of social change mir­ror the tec­ton­ics of shift­ing plates as they respond to the dynam­ics of cat­a­stro­phe along­side moments of progress, and then regres­sion, the agency of the archi­tect can­not be restrict­ed to a reliance on the cur­rent nar­row def­i­n­i­tion of tec­ton­ics as the for­mal act of build­ing. A broad­en­ing of terms is called for where­by tec­ton­ics, in response to these per­tur­ba­tions, become a means of medi­a­tion between mate­ri­al­i­ty and tech­ni­cal objects (tools), and between envi­ron­men­tal forces and ques­tions of aes­thet­ics. Tools of see­ing that are born from the under­ly­ing pro­gram­mat­ic con­tin­ua of slow mov­ing cat­a­stroph­ic events can detect and antic­i­pate advance traces of these dis­rup­tions and pre­pare us to act accordingly.