Okay, I admit it, there is no series to this blog. I've been on vacation for a while and I know that my readership may have gotten discouraged at the lack of posts. I'll try to do better from now on.
The building pictured above is the most significant work of architecture I saw on the recent trip I took with my wife to North Carolina. This photo was taken near a seafood restaurant where we had lunch. I regard the building as beautiful--considerably more beautiful than when it was new and functional.
The picturesque appeal of decayed, dilapidated and deteriorating architecture is a bit of a puzzle. Age often confers grandeur, but I can offer no good explanation as to why this is so. Details that accumulate over time with no comprehensive design organization can result in powerful compositions. At one level, this is an example of spontaneous self-ordering--akin to what economists like to call the "market." Perhaps there is something in us that has an inherent distrust or disinterest in homogenous objects or collections of objects. A pile of stones at a gravel yard doesn't quite capture the imagination. A pile of rubble that used to be a medieval castle, festooned with vines and moss, is the object of deep veneration. But the accumulation of detail over time is no guarantee of beauty or interest.
Our journey down and back through a small, but significant section of the U.S. revealed a landscape of roads, more roads and yet more roads, punctuated by numerous examples of ubiquitous roadside architecture. There seemed to be no plan to anything. There was little to distinguish one place from another. The box stores, the gas stations and the suburban homes merged into one sublimely boring image. I could almost feel my brain's memory center resetting the same playback sequence from its archive of visual data.
And yet, this is prosperity, writ large American style. The possibility that anything can be refashioned, redone, and thrown out. The resources of space and time seemed endless and inhuman. The sun beat down on it all, promising the energy to make it all happen again.
I would have liked to have seen several shots of the old building: there is grandeur in age, in structure, and in why it remains. Your current picture suggests a story, a history, and a mystery. That is why I like it.
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