"The Building Site, Redux" Timothy Hyde

The paradox of the building site lies in the fact that, although inescapably essential to the realization of architecture, the building site must inevitably vanish, superseded by the durable forms of the completed building. Such traces that remain, in documents, photographs, or physical marks upon the building, have been of passing interest to architectural history for the information they reveal about the realized object, but a different mode of attention remains to be focused upon the building site itself. To reveal, and to represent, these dimensions not just as prelude or precondition but as an independent event, architectural history must return to the building site with a different set of tools.