Djabarouti, J., 2019.

Material Clues: decoding our past to understand our present

Buildings are melting pots of stories and experiences. They are not just a manmade product but also a container of memory. The submitted image shows the side of a building lining a narrow street in Barcelona. It shows physical (material) evidence of a door once being within the stone wall. What was this door used for? What were the aspirations behind the removal of this door? We can ask these questions and ponder their answers because clues have been left within the building materiality -a brick door infill, set within a stone wall; a timber lintel left in-situ, relieved of its only duty.
When trying to answer the above questions, we realise that understanding buildings is not about architecture - it is about people. The more we understand these changes, the more we connect with those who came before us, clarifying who we are and what we are building upon.