2008
Great forms of beauty often remain unseen, unsung, and unnoticed. There are large urban stretches of Philadelphian architecture, for example, that should count among the most beautiful miles in the world... but "beautiful" in the Surrealist sense of the word— as convulsive beauty. Arcane beauty. Beauty that, in the moment of its apprehension, verges on a mild horror that makes your eyes go misty. Beauty hidden in the forgotten and war-torn and collapsing sections of greater Phildelphia. The industrial Northeast. The far-flung West. The crazed South and Southwest. Where Philadelphian architecture really gets beautiful and convulsive. Rich in architectural bricolage and terse, accidental color palettes. An elegance burnt to form by suffering, by desperation and stupid decisions, by a sloppy madness that knows not what. An urban rustic. Stray minarets and fori romani, full of loitering opium-eaters. City blocks, at length, eroded and sculpted by drug addiction. Graphing ugly needs in plaster and wood.
This is subconscious architecture, dream architecture; where mythos has easily replaced simple, honest, useful form... Ghost architecture. Architecture that wears its own conscious and subconscious history, in layers... Occasionally happy, North Philadelphian Fat-Albert poverty. Bazaar logics at work. Mystery— as in murder mystery. Human nests. Wasted Adrenaline. Wet Garbage. Clots of white paper. Webs of Significance.
In the lost regions of Philadelphia, and similar cities, architecture grows in total freedom. Outside of Care and, therefore, outside of Control. What kind of flowers of evil grow here? What kind of wild kudzu? Unchecked and ludicrous events. Check-cashing available next to liquor stores. Kenzo loonies soapboxing about sports, weather, and current events. Weird white banquet halls full of well-dressed Dominicans. Appliance stores that copy keys and probably even hem pants and lend money.
In these situations, I have to speak for myself only. Neither for the rich nor the poor. To really appreciate ghost architecture correctly, you need a brattier and impractical outlook on these things. On these forms. Practicality and practicability only count in design and construction, which ask hellishly exacting economic, legal, and neighborly considerations of the builder and architect. Architectural beauty and appreciation has no such demands. We can surrender to absolute irresponsibility, to total mythos. We can love buildings set in a vernacular of death, collapse, wretchedness, danger, and abuse. Architecture collage. It doesn't matter.
Nevertheless, like the Piranesi etchings of Roman ruin, I would urge the viewer, the stroller, or the agent not just to think about these images as mediations on fleeting gloria mundi— lost promise —but rather as a matter of mythos replacing history. As images of a newly-grown arcane beauty, inspiring not for what it once was, but what it has now become in its earthy, overgrown grandeur.
