Fractured Perspectives

Brutalist Architecture is dead. It is a ghost. Its image haunts us, reminding us of a future that never came to be. But what if Brutalism didn’t die? What if we could open up a channel of communication with its ghost? What secrets might it reveal? Google Street View acts as a time machine, allowing us to explore architectural ghosts such as the Birmingham Central Library. As you move through Street View the buildings structure is in a permanent state of flux, constantly dissolving and then reforming. As the buildings form collapses so does the idea that architecture is static or immobile. We are not moving, the buildings are. This lecture explores the implications of these movements on the Birmingham Central Library and how this alters our perception of fact and fiction. As the image mutates information is lost and new meanings are up for grabs. The idea of our virtual and physical worlds being separate entities is becoming indistinct and the question of which space is more real increasingly blurred. As files are compressed and downloaded in cyberspace they lose information, they move from their original context into new spaces, acquiring alternative meanings along the way. This performative lecture weaves together real and imagined histories to investigate the relocation of the Birmingham Central Library to Taiwan in 2018. By adopting the role of the cyber-flaneur I will navigate my way through time and space, exploring the implications of a landscape dematerialised and the potential of moving buildings; the Internet providing a ready-made aesthetic to visually articulate the distortion of time and history, describing a world where ruins have become utopias and where archaeology and futurism merge.