The double Obsolescence of the Farnsworth House

Abstract

Rarely does architecture reach its functional obsolescence. The usual is disenchantment: an obsolescence of enthusiasm that reveals the emotional exhaustion of its inhabitants, of a cultural group, or a whole society. Given the narratives that describe obsolescence as a stage prior to that of re-founding, one might think about it as a state of multiplicity that results from the coexistence of lives projected around the same built object. To revert one of these obsolescences may suppose ending the existence of the other. From this perspective it is possible to devise a non- binary project strategy to pose a more complex and asymmetric coexistence. In the case that we are presenting here, the living years of the Farnsworth House, this possibility emerges from the conception of a soft architecture, subversive and critical, capable of embracing the complexity of its own exhaustion and constant reinvention.