Crisis Formalism has a subcategory: “Collapse.” This is the most challenging stance taken in the issue, as it demands absolute faith in the representative powers of architecture. The belief that architecture holds the potential – and the responsibility – to embody a moment. Sometimes the spirit of the times takes on the form of collapse itself, reflecting an unsettling reality. But this is a monumental impulse. In the fluid reversals of the polycrisis, collapse becomes a faith tested by doubt. The very terms of the polycrisis place the entire architectural project at risk of capture.
Faith, tested by crisis. Work that generates monumental architectural forms from failure combined with the rigorous demands of disciplinarity allow architecture to tap into the contemporary spirit without sacrificing its critical discourse. This is a wide leap from architecture rationalized by a historic discourse that maintains the legibility of architectural objects, even as they disintegrate. When I speak of a crisis in form, I refer to a failure of architecture to properly integrate the crisis. To clarify the dynamics between the contemporary crisis and the long durée of architectural discourse, the work of David Eskenazi shows how architectural form can integrate forces of crisis and remain both optimistic and disciplinary.
A reality core to architecture: the acceleration of gravity. At a rate of thirty-two feet per second, architecture is pushed to the floor. This acceleration manifests as a primary geometric distortion in the work – action verbs like deflection, sag, slump, reminiscent of Richard Serra’s action verbs. The brilliance lies in Eskenazi’s acceptance of gravity not as a mere negative force, but as one that actively shapes form. This universal source of energy is a generative force of all architectural projects – architecture must consistently withstand this acceleration so it predetermines its structural logic. The work here is designed to kink, fail, twist, and crumple in precise misalignments with this force. The beginnings of architecture’s collapse.
The material reality of typical North American architecture is notably poor. The engineering of buildings here is tuned like single use mold: stud walls, rosin paper, cardboard, PVC pipe, and painter’s tape. As such, architectural models often reflect building reality more directly than in material economies dominated by concrete or brick. It’s no accident that Frank Gehry’s office, which developed directly out of the conditions of North American construction, is dominated by the process of model-making. Gehry’s work speaks to the sculptural quality of construction, a byproduct of post-war building practices in the United States and Canada. Eskenazi’s work, rather than expressing the authorial freedom of using these materials, derives its form from its inherent weakness. This weakness can be traced to the same political economy that resulted in construction materials of such low quality now resembles a Krisenbilder (a diagram used by polycrisis theorist Adam Tooze uses to visualize interconnected crisis) pegged with labor, democratic governance, insurance markets, trade policy, ecological policy, and more.
Scale in architectural discourse is understood as immaterial. Shifting scale accepts a translation between materials – an architect’s graphite line becomes a sheet of drywall. In Eskenazi’s work, scale intersects with gravity and material in a concrete way. This work makes material scaleness and scale suddenly very material. Scale is no longer an abstract force of discourse. There are no line weights in Eskenazi’s work. Scale changes without any corresponding alteration of line’s thickness. In Slump Model (2019), we witness this literal approach: the same object, made of the same materials, shifts scale and transforms under the dual pressures of material and gravity. Scale becomes the ultimate architectural force – a force that only the architect can wield. Canonically, form is not meant to be affected by scale. This work critiques digital tools that, for all their precision, fail to grasp the grounded reality of scale. Scale is presented as a zero-sum reality based on material economies and the ever-reliable-thirty-two feet per second.
