Buildings, Lollipops

“... when they came closer, they saw that the little house was built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake, and the windows were made of clear sugar. Hansel reached up and broke off a little of the roof to see how it tasted, while Gretel stood next to the window panes and was nibbling at them. Then a gentle voice called out from inside:

Nibble, nibble, little mouse

Who is nibbling at my house?

Suddenly the door opened, and a woman, as old as the hills and leaning on a crutch, came creeping out.”

Hansel and Gretel, Brothers Grimm

The world of architecture at the very basic level of construction is a territory still populated entirely by men: brick layers, electricians, insulators, plumbers, carpenters, all the testosterone combined and well suited to the greed of the real estate market. But what fuels all that muscle power? Nourishing is as immediately connected with the feminine aspect, as sweetness is with weakness. Sugar is the quickest and the cheapest energy source; the commodity of a brutal, early capitalism. It is a crystal, a granular solid, and finally, a white cube, produced in astronomical quantities.

When placed in hot water it disappears quickly.

This candy wall will be hacked, pounded and smashed into smaller pieces, as they used to do in the 1700ies.

Back then, in order to use sugar, you had to go through all this physical trouble. It will be exposed to: heat, wind, street, hunger and also frivolous abuse, as lollipops by definition are: licking and sucking, and ultimately to the tooth of time.

It may melt into a sticky mess, feed the culturally excluded humans and animals and eventually, in case of rain, flow straight into the sewer.

This project questions our trust in materiality of the world we live in. As seductive the promise of pleasure that the sweetness of sugar on our tongues could offer, so deceitful are the massive, and at the same time unstable walls of our buildings, our calculations, speculations and investments in real estate, foolishly ignoring the fact that time beats into them. May our efforts result in projects made of stronger tissues and have deeper roots for foundations.

Buildings, Lollipops project builds on a dream of prosperity with all its magic, but also on the threat and the fear, as fairy tales do, striving to teach us better.