Reconstructing Reconstructions

Selected images

About

Reconstruction is always a creative act. Through the work of interpreting found evidence and filling the gaps of lost material by careful inference and, inevitably, speculation, one not only restores something that is lost but authors something new. Oscillating between the past and present, original and referent, the propositional practice of constructing (and reconstructing) history is intimately linked to how we address challenges of the present and future. 

In the nineteenth century, French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc established a practice of restoration as design that bridged the scales (both spatial and temporal) of landscape, geology, and architecture. Through a series of speculative design investigations—reconstructions of reconstructions—the work presented here investigates his practice in order to explore methodologies of landscape reconstruction today and their potential as a critical practice in the context of increasing global environmental change.