Rehearsing Decay
06 Jun—22 June (17 dates)
Edinburgh & The Lothians Exhibition Installation
Event Summary
Rehearsing Decay is an exhibition that explores architectural decay as a lens to examine human-environment reciprocity, proposing an alternative dialogue with architecture, not as the pursuit of durability, but as a living negotiation.
Date(s)
06 Jun—22 June
Location
George Brown & Sons Engineering Works, Shore, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 6QS
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Supporters
Edinburgh College of ArtOrganiser
Ahmad Salah
Social
The evolution of architecture, and of dwelling itself, cannot be separated from the deeper question of how we inhabit the planet. Today, we find ourselves caught in a culture of excess, where consumption extends beyond objects to the very spaces we occupy. Architecture is often commodified: static, disposable, detached. But what if we rehearsed a different relationship?
Rehearsing Decay traces the persistent presence of decay in the built environments of Syria and Scotland, two distinct geographies. it challenges the notion of architecture that seeks perfectionism. Instead of viewing decay as failure, it proposes it as a lens to reveal reciprocity, or the absence of it, between people and their environments.
Through fieldwork-based visuals and an experimental installation, the project reflects on how structures once sustained by care and collective labor are slowly reclaimed by the earth. Decay reveals three forms of reciprocity: between people and what is built through repair; between what is built and land through reclaiming; and among people through collective effort.
These traces of abandonment are not only physical, but social, exposing the disconnection between dwellers and their environments. By attending to what fades, this work proposes decay as a form of knowledge: a material archive of what we value, neglect, and abandon. It is a call to reimagine architecture not as the pursuit of durability, but as a living negotiation.
