Monuments of architecture and creators of the transcendence - Cenotaphs of Doom: Walter Pichler. (Part 1)
In this series Cenotaphs of Doom, we have studied the variants of design that for its intended purposes is to outlast the human biology, whilst also offering a momentary protection from a cataclysmic event. However, as discussed in Structural Inversion, which is building inward into the Earth, it would also herald a possibility that humanity may need to adjust for the longer term as a habitation that is underground. Pending the environmental issues above ground, such as climate change or war, also the possibility of a meteorite, comet or destructive solar storm that could undo all of civilizations technological advancement.
But rather than a single event, it will more likely be a continuum of modifications to what the human race once knew, impacted by dramatic and successive changes. With the viral outbreak that is currently moving around the world in waves until a vaccine can be sourced and global inoculations can be achieved, which may occur towards the end of 2021 – we are already witnessing the restructuring of urban and social landscapes in real time. Unfortunately, on a social level, the virus Covid-19, although this has happened before in history, has been guided by fears and misinformation around the pathogen which only exasperates its ferocity. Whilst becoming politicized with demagogues preying on the polarization, all the while relying on monetary policy of central banks, that no know no other way to abate a crisis; they print money. Eying interest rates on debt to be in the negative range, it is unprecedented time of flooding the economies with cheap money, more so the banks, that rely so much on global networks. The whole process becomes a fool hardy economic measure, that out of desperation from an unknown viral outbreak, to be the only gauge. This has proven to be fatal. Lockdowns flashing on and off throughout the world, when the all clear is perceived by its idealism of contingency modeling with an urgency to reopen economies – the virus returns.
There is a cultist appeal to doom, despite the connotation of it entailing the end of humanity. One could one also see doomsday as a metaphor, that in this series, relies on the structural concepts to enforce the survivability of human race or at least a testament that it existed. Yet, it is prudent that in the context of the fascination of cataclysmic events or more so the implementation of structural entities that are to out live human biology, that one does not become too enveloped into the anticipation of the end. Which would in turn psychologically vex an individual, rending he or she an inability to cope with dramatic events, no matter how big or small they may entail.
Although I would not commit the late architect and sculptor Walter Pichler to be a 'doom' inspired designer, but, he did indeed encapsulated an era, after World War Two which lived in the shadow of nuclear war. Pichler also prescribed that, as the rapid pace of information and technology grew from the 1960's, so would the impact on society and as a hypothesis of what the future could become. How would humans cope? More so the mind, it was, from a ruin of technological idealism, that Pichler envisioned a populous insulated and remove from the harshness of environments. Pichler's works, particularly his later efforts before he passed away in 2012, were, despite the the length of time that it took for him to complete a sculptural piece, were, when completed, monolithic and eternal testaments. As a visual medium do offer the participant a Cenotaph of Doom.
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(A.Glass 2020)
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