DANIELLE HEWITT

This reading takes as its starting point a small stone maquette carved from the debris of bombed buildings in London following the end of World War II. The title is taken from a quote by Jean Paul Sartre which was used by Anthony Vidler in the opening of his 1992 text Architecture Dismembered. From this text a narrative moves through aesthetic concepts of empathy to reflect on how this figurative piece of debris might be situated.

 

The reading internalises the idea of the maquette as something a priori to a final form in the telling of this narrative and as a reflection on the legacy of aerial bombing in history, discourse, and the London landscape.