Ephemeral Crossroads: seven lamps, six years, seven lux-pavilions

Abstract

Building materials in the modern era have assumed significance in architectural theory which they had not possessed in the past. The change was no doubt due to the multiplicity of materials, newly minted due to the innovative industrial production, which imposed and invited new ways of building. John Ruskin (1819-1900) proved to have a great appreciation for the inherent qualities of building matter, its materiality and innovation by recognising the validity of the honest structure: Truth of the materials or rather honesty in the use of materials. However, the modern era has become the manifestation of the temporal, the momentary, the transitory, the ephemeral, the impermanent and as such this phenomenon is aligned closely to the innovation of materials/materiality within building practices. This paper deals with the manifestation of this modern paradigm in a series of lux architectural pavilions/folly over a period of six years: seven projects paralleling Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849).