Waste Not

Salvaging the Lives of Buildings at the Land/Digital Divide

Abstract

The destruction of architecture or its re-location elsewhere to avoid demolition is a part of a history of the planet’s wastelands. Land/Slide, a vast art installation exhibition challenges how we consider historic buildings that have been transplanted, as it were, to new tangible and intangible, digital, places. The buildings that form the physical springboard for the exhibition were salvaged as a result of their being relocated to the Markham Museum, near Toronto. Land/Slide opens a debate around architectural history and contemporary practices in art, architectural heritage, and urban cultural life. Artists and architects were invited to adaptively reuse and infuse a selected salvaged building with new life while weaving it back into its previous existence. This chapter explores the game-changing strategies presented in this exhibition that challenge how we consider heritage buildings, sustainable architecture, systems of living and the stratifications of architectural history in what I am calling an ecology of heritage in contemporary culture.