Towards an Aesthetics of Destruction: The Dismantling of the Graphite Rod Silo at the Vandellòs I nuclear power plant

Abstract

Architecture necessarily responds to a function, and that is where the main difference with respect to the rest of the arts is. What the modern tradition installs is the integration of the arts, and it is from the second half of the 20th century that a series of architects moved to arts. We propose that there is a series of architect-artists who, in addition to expanding the field of the profession, carry out what we call expanded-architecture, which is the creation of artistic works with a marked theoretical basis in the training of the architect, achieving works of an architectural nature but far from architecture as we know it, since they lack the function, primary issue for it.

We review the cases of Alfredo Jaar and Francis Alÿs, and conclude that these artists, who share the fact of being architects, each carry out, in their own way, projects on the periphery of the profession.