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Accepted Paper:
A Building is a Mouth Through Which the Earth Speaks
Lachlan Summers
(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
While concrete has a useful life of about 100 years, in Mexico City, earthquakes, weathering and corrupt developers conspire to prematurely trigger concrete’s useless life. For residents trapped in the overlap of concrete's useful and useless lives, a building is both a home and a geological entity.
Paper Abstract:
Modern concrete has a useful life of about 100 years. After that, it begins its useless life, which tends to be much longer. But in some places, the useless life of concrete begins well before its useful life has ended. This is especially true in Mexico City, where earthquakes, weathering, injudicious construction, and a corrupt real estate sector conspire to trigger concrete’s useless life. Sinking foundations, cracking walls, leaning buildings, and caving roofs are but some of the indicators that mark the onset of concrete’s useless life. For residents, such buildings become two things simultaneously: a home that houses all the securities of domesticity, and a geological entity, distant and predetermined. Framing this overlap of the useless and useful lives as a geological simultaneity, this paper draws on 36 months ethnographic research in Mexico City to ask a very simple question: how does it feel to live in a building that is as much a home as it is an avatar of its future collapse? I suggest that while geological time is often understood as something utterly removed from human experience, inhabiting the useless life of concrete introduces a geological axis to everyday life, and compels residents of Mexico City to imagine a present that vanishes into deep time.