Gladys Lee, "Burn After Building."
As structures surrender to the flames of ritual, its ashes nourish the earth, fertile soil births forests, and timber returns as architecture. Each ending seeds new beginnings, of a cyclical nature. In this project, architecture and silviculture collaborate to address the ecologically detrimental homogeneity of Sugi plantations in Japan, leveraging the country's tradition of fire rituals to reignite reverence for forestry.
Here, the ritual functions as an economic trade—where making and unmaking sustains craft, tradition, and the forest itself. In this exchange, labor inverts to be ceremonial, destruction fuels renewal, and the artistry of building, inseparable from languages of the ritual, continues its legacy through cycles of rebirth.
Program: Master of Architecture
Advisor: Miles Gertler