In 1948 When the White House was found to be in danger of structural collapse, an emergency "reconstruction" was engaged to redo the building's interior both in soundness and layout. The construction images are striking: seen here is a comparison of SANAA's Zollverein cube and the interior of the White House with its floor plates removed. Both spaces are large, empty, and charmingly awkward. Elsewhere, thanks to the construction process we find decidedly complex spaces in these images. In fact, as a building in the throes of decomposition and resurrection, the White House is quite contemporary. If Junkspace is a world of perpetual renovation, the Capitol, as discussed previously, and the White House are OJ: Original Junk. Here the stasis of the neo-classical facade hides an evolving interior of intricate, provisional spaces caught between minimal armatures of construction.
Junkspace needs the idea of "done" to protect the sanctity of its subjects in their pursuit of perfection. Even if Junkspace feeds on a relativist understanding of the world, it does so grudgingly, always still aspiring to the perfect composition, the perfect state of doneness to be complete now and for eternity. Monumentality was still the concubine of Modernity. While appearing to rely on classical ideas of static perfection, OJ aspires to timeless Truth and thus forsakes the possibility of predicting the future. OJ is refreshingly straightforward in its pragmatic dispatching of the issues at hand. By only attending to the problems of the moment when expansion or renovation is begun, OJ marks the passing of time with specific solutions to specific problems. Junkspace gazes through the crystal ball to produce spaces of abstract possibility, but OJ is the crystal: an idiosyncratic thing that may be broken later, re-set, polished up, or otherwise transmitted to future generations of problem-solvers as both a coherent historical idea and a literal collection of matter that will productively resist any alterations.
