SS 2020 Burning Down the House
Juliette Martin.
Five Fires
This semester I wrote a story about a house and the woman living in that house
Today, I will tell you the story of a woman and her house, going through five fires. This story might inspire you ways of facing damage and destruction, ways of accepting the trouble and staying with it.
And vertically.
Facing the burn She wondered, is it a curse or a blessing?” Looking closer, She noticed the fire left damage and destruction behind. She will give back its structural role to the damaged. She will leave the destroyed to its end. She sealed the burned wood in an amber time capsule, repairing the damaged and letting go of the rest
After the repair, she gifted the house back with its function.
Since the first day of rain, water kept coming back.
She saw the unprotected wood suffering slowly.
She needed to shield the house from the miracle.
She built a roof where the structure could support it.
To embrace the gifts of the miracle, she had to collect the rain.
She built a vascular infrastructure for the house, to lead the water where she needed it.
One day the world started to burn outside.
She saw the structure threatened again.
To protect the wood, she build walls of bricks.
She sealed the structure and herself in an opaque shell.
Now she had to stay inside waiting for the fire to stop.
One day, as the fire was still burning outside, something inside of her cought fire. Her head was smoking and her heart was melting.
All she wanted was to get light, to see the outside world.
She bursted the façade open.
All she could see was a wall of flames.
The heat was burning her face.
She filled the hole with glass bricks, in the hope of never seeing fire again.
From the Burst, the temperature got higher. The Bricks melted.
One day, rain came, finally.
She made an opening in the façade, built a staircase and went outside.
Outside, things seemed unchanged.
The fire did not do any material damage.
But she had the eerie felling that invisible things had burned.
She had been consumed by the fire outside.
She needed light, She needed to see the outside, and make herself be seen.
She needed to make the house functional for the life she wanted now.
She needed to make her house her own.
One day, she started an arson in the heart of her own house.
The fire opened the house to the sky.
She build a metal structure in the hole. She put a first ladder in it, then a second, then a third.
She wanted to go above the wall of flames, to see outside further as she ever could.
She wanted to watch over the world.
Project by: Juliette Martin
Studio Alex Lehnerer, ETH