Drawing a New Architectural Paradigm: Fid-Bau Portal

Drawing a New Architectural Paradigm

Capdevila Castellanos, Iván / Iborra Pallarés, Vicente

Abstract The innovative use of the photomontage technique in the Smithsons’ proposal for Golden Lane competition in 1952, as a strategy of celebrating the ordinary in a destroyed post-war London’s East End, allows them to discover their source of inspiration in reality “as found” and to turn it into a new architectural paradigm. The Smithsons’ turn in the use of photomontage towards a subjective energy is more typical of collage. Golden Lane shows the competition environment as it is, with tragic remains, with its ruins and basements, reminiscent of the buildings that disappeared under the bombs. However, people emerge to give a new life to the existing, to celebrate the ordinary and the public realm. For this reason, in this image the building almost disappears, giving prominence to the environment and the people. The important thing, we see, is reality: the existing reality and reality created by architecture. The collage allows to superimpose the three layers of the new reality in a single drawing: the existing reality, the proposed intervention and created reality (represented by real people cut out from real photos and pasted above the rest). Reality “as it is” or as coined by the Smithsons “as found”—imperfect, devastated, tragic—is finally ready to become the new paradigm.