AWC 20 – COMMUNES

Architecture Without Content started in the United States of America. First, it was based on a fascination with the Big Box—a building of a particular scale—in direct relation to the landscape it inhabits. A building also that in its mute expression is able to contain anything: a container; a receptacle; a black hole. The big box inspired us somewhat into a revival of the myth of the American frontier, as much fictitious as pragmatic. It has been the basis of several Portraits of America. If the big box was perhaps at first the protagonist of a purely architectural affair, it became the alibi for a more ambiguous kind of portraiture: the depiction of the American Field.