WILD LOVE
ROGUE KNOWLEDGE
HANDCRAFTED
Do Glass houses get inhabited by ghosts? Is there an architecture that can stand on its own feet without the presence of ghosts?
"Every structure is haunted by its architecture", said James Joyce in a lost interview. Or was it the other way around? We do not remember the order of the factors but they will not alter the product anyway. What then would be the structure of an architecture made entirely of glass? Pure and absolute transparency perhaps is a thing of a kind that would bypass the notion of structure as modernity had invented (including the glass architecture with slim metallic structures, so to speak, also a modern thing). Modernity attempted the impossible thesis (and Niemeyer was one of its fiercest advocates) to blend Structure with Architecture. The Glass house cliché is the utmost object of evidence inside this hypothesis turning into synthesis. Joyce is one of the strongest candidates for the role of best architect of the 20th century, a.k.a. Modernity pure and simple. The proof of this candidacy is that his Ulysses (even being postmodern) is the most transparent modern object ever built.
Tupi started celebrating Bloomsday since the year of the Uniflex retrofitting of the Forma building. That happened mostly due to a farewell memorial we planned that took place one day before the re-form building site took off: the date had coincided with the 16th of June. The affair was born out of a ghostly request: the empty and silent building asked for a ceremony to mark its purity. Nothing could suit it better than to have asked the ghost of Joyce to guide and preside the project and the building site. Thus, from that occasional day onwards, Joyce officially took hold of Tupi’s destiny. The Iemanjá day of the 2nd of February, Joyce’s birthday, was set as our official X-mas ephemerid. In the following year, we decided to re-stage the experience and the invitation from both sides of the table, to and from the Bo Bardi Institute, housed at the late couple’s glass house in São Paulo, the best venue and partner we could have ever dreamed of having. All thanks to Waldick Jatobá for his immense generosity. That specific 16th of June of 2019 happened in the Bo Bardi’s Glass House when it was surrounded by an art installation by Lucia Koch, that comprised of an all-encompassing multicolored and multi-lit external brise-soleil-like curtain that half-blinded the glass house.
The art installation triggered figures of speech that linked the image of the magic curtain to the image of the “ineluctable modality of the visible” from the voice of Stephen Dedalus in tandem from the pages of Ulysses' telemachiad third part. Ulysses is a tour-de-force in transparency. It is so transparent that one sees through the whole edifice of its text. The idea of a transparent building is a pleonastic approach to the old modern desire of pure structure. Something, some architecture where one sees through it. Something, some architecture where one could walk through its walls. Just like a ghost. Ghosts are the heroes of Structuralism. Ghosts are the heroes of Deconstruction. Being the later concept the other side of the same idea described by the concept of the former. Modern architecture was translated into common language by the 1960s’ avant-gardes of French theory. The reading of Ulysses by Tupi is one more contribution to the dream of Modernity. The contribution can be summarized as if we all were putting forth a white-table other-worldly approach to Ghosts in order to read all buildings as if they were all made of Glass. Bloomsday is the official day to celebrate Modern Architecture. Yes, I said Yes.