sourdough architecture

Abstract

Architecture today works on the basis of fragmentation: it can be perceived as a one-man show, divorced from the larger preexisting ecological context that long precedes it. We only understand it as beginning from and within the site, without any awareness of the consequences of material conditions before or after the architecture occurs. Architecture dominates nature, rendering an idealized perfect state: ageless, seemingly unaffected by daily use or natural weathering --until it is deemed unusable. Simply said, architecture is egocentric, where architectural time neglects the ecological deep time of geology, decay, erosion, and climate. This thesis states that, like sourdough starter, architecture arises from nature (flour and water) in the form of building materials and their physical existence, and with natural forces (wild yeast fermentation) such as rain or wind. Sourdough architecture is a pre-manual for recontextualizing architecture as the entanglement of architecture and ecology to reimagine architecture as a cyclical, not linear, process of change over time, embracing wind and rain as actors in the active making and unmaking of architecture. This book is a part of the pre-manual document series that lays down the production of the custom state (decay) to produce sourdough architecture and mine materials as a building stock to make more and more architecture for the next generations (sourdough starter). The architect is seen as a choreographer that collaborates with the natural forces. In sourdough architecture, architecture becomes a means to witness natural processes through the slowness of time, depletion of materials, and context.