Forrest_Metamorphosis

The very word metamorphosis challenges the traditional notion of architecture as static. Maybe the seemingly ingrained idea that architecture is static—from Vitruvian principles of “firmness, commodity, and delight” to teaching current architectural structures as “statics”—is what should be offered as a “new” way of understanding architecture. This would be an interesting architectural project, because if you look at history, architecture cannot resist metamorphosis. Robert Smithson describes this condition through entropy. Commanding a wide array of related examples, Smithson spins a poetic description of how things all are subject to change. I personally most liked how Smithson saw things planned and things happenstance had little difference—both are shaped by the forces of reality. However, to Smithson, entropy is different than metamorphosis in that entropy is the wearing down of one thing into another, whereas metamorphosis also considers things being reconstructed into something new. Most importantly, though, is approaching change as an element to be observed rather than judged, in order to work within its constraints.
Warner’s article entitled “metamorphosis” began by addressing the word’s roots (pun intended) in mythology. I remember reading Ovid in Latin, where Daphne was transformed into a tree. The situation behind this myth is interesting with respect to Smithson, because Daphne’s problem was a result of neither good nor bad, but rather just the human trait of arrogance. Since it was not her arrogance (but rather Eros) but was her transformation, it is impossible to derive any lesson (the planned) from the story. Rather, the only thing that can be learned is that things do change for whatever reason, which is why it is an etiological myth, or one used to explain to the Greeks why things were a certain way not bound to logic or meaning. In this sense, it is the paradigm of Smithson’s idea of entropy.
All architecture is subject to these abstract whims. Even the most “firm” architecture, like geology, eventually weathers and erodes. Nothing is guaranteed to be permanent yet it is an outstanding goal in architecture. This is certainly the overriding motif in Frazer’s An Evolutionary Architecture, where he argues new tools (namely computers) can be used to harness the transformative potentials of architecture. I think the false idea of permanence is a distinctly western (/judeo-christian) notion that follows the metaphor of the body; since or corporeal existence is not permanent, a false permanence is religiously constructed. Architectural permanence parallels this hope by suggesting that spiritually permanent people can erect static structures where the reality is quite different: temporary bodies can only set in motion temporal buildings that are destined to encounter some change.