under construction
photography | construction sites by carol kleinfeldt
weather finish accident documentation landscape
uncontrolled processes
Site photographs are typically confined to the role of record shots, indications of conditions soon to disappear, one layer after another until the finished product is complete. They are obligatory and uninspiring but necessary, like a sheet out of the Specifications Documents. When the project is completed, a professional photographer is commissioned to take the photographs that will be used to promote, publish and submit the work to awards programs. These are the beautiful images taken by Steven Evans, Richard Fitoussi, Michael Brunelle, Michael Awad and a host of talented Canadian photographers that give us those iconic images of architecture. There are so many more states to the production of architecture, from liquid to solid, that could be illustrated and allow the frantic and uncontrolled aspects of a site to enhance the understanding of that process.
The photographs shown here, taken just after the worst of a winter storm, record the awesome elegance and calm that followed. The construction safety officer had cleared the eighty-six acre site of all crews leaving me and my associate the unique experience of looking around at a strange new world, rather than the familiar, frenetic construction site we had come to take for granted. We were free to just look without the burden of inspecting or instructing or criticising. This was the point in time when the architecture is a folly within a landscape, not
42
On Site review 21: stormy weather
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator