On architecture as a matter of time - A conversation with Lydia Xynogala

Welcome to the Onassis AiR Conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house since I first entered as a participant of the Critical Practices Program in Fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open-ended process of relationing, which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

In this conversation, I'll be speaking with Lydia Xynogala. With a background in architecture Lydia works across formats and scales as a designer, writer and scholar, making buildings, interiors, objects, environments and exhibitions that explore the material affects of built artifacts in the construction of cultural narratives. She is a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals Movement III with a collective research focus on the notion of ecologies. Today, we will discuss about matter as an active marker of time and the role of architecture in generating new building typologies, as well as new types and forms of communal engagement and production. Lydia, welcome to Pali-Room!

Thank you for hosting me.

It's a pleasure to have you here today and I have a fun fact to share before we start. I realized the other day, while I was looking into a journal that "reads" into cities called "Desired Landscapes" -it was journal number three- that we had both made contributions into this journal and actually our contributions are back to back.

I had not realized that.

Yeah, me neither.

This is amazing! Well, I have to go back.

You have to look at it. Your contribution is titled "Landscape With" and it's a series of collages that you made about the shifting landscape of Manhattan and my text was about a trip that I made in Cairo and back then we didn't know each other.

No, and I've read your text, actually, but I hadn't placed the name with the text, with you.

And here we are now! I wanted to share that.

That's amazing!

I was thinking of what would be the best way to start our conversation today and I couldn't find a starting point. I think that's because I've been observing you and observing the way that you always work on more than one thing at a time. Your practice is very multivalent. So, I decided to start with a quote that I found in one of your writings. From the time we've spent together, I feel that this encapsulates your research interest and practice. I'm going to read that now. It's a quote by Isamu Noguchi. "Ultimately, I like to think, when you get back to the furthest point of technology, when you get to outer space, what do you need to bring back? Rocks!"

I'm really glad that you bring this quote up, because it's really one of my favorite quotes of all times and a good point to begin with. Indeed, my practice and writing is very much engaged with rocks and geology in general and we can return to this, but your observation that I work on different things is very accurate. I trained as an architect in the UK and the US and I'm writing also a PhD in architecture. So, all my background is architecture. For the past 13 years, I have been living in New York and I've taught there, but in parallel to teaching, I slowly started an independent architecture practice that is called alos, which is really a series of word games that describe the nature and ongoing interests of my architecture practice. It was in lack of better words of how to describe the things that I do, that I came up with these words. Architecture, landscape, objects and stories -alos- are some of the things we make. But it's also about aggregate, lateral or strata, where the fascination with geology comes in. It analyzes, learns, organizes and studies or analog love of stuff. So, the list goes on. But I use this word games because I'm working on these different things and because my work -both the making of spaces, buildings, environments and my research- engages with material culture. Through my practice I am looking to embrace the present condition and specifically the potential that lies on the ground, to seek for new types and forms of communal engagement and also for the production of knowledge. And for me, that is done through disseminating and reformulating matter and we can get more specific. But the natural sciences are, for me, a field of endless inspiration. I often borrow concepts or analytical methods, but not as a scientist, but more as an architect looking at the natural sciences in an expanded way. So, to be inspired, but also to develop critical tools that can be used to discuss ecology in relationship to the built environment. Some examples are: I've been writing on fossils as material specimens, but also as indicators of various troubled ecologies, such as nuclear waste storage and major catastrophe or climate changes or earthquakes. All these events can be deciphered and read through the close examination of rocks and also of soil and their interpretation. My current PhD research is in the history of thermal bath buildings in Greece and I've developed this methodology that I call "petrography", which is "petra" and "grafia", writing through stones or recording through stones, and I'm writing this history starting from the ground, to the water to the body. I'm looking at minerals being simultaneously a medium, but also actants for various transformations and at the same time sites for care. They are non-human agents, but they have different forms -seismic, volcanic, tectonic, healing, muddy. I'm looking at their capacity to mobilize different apparati, like the scientific apparatus or a medical, or a political one. I'm telling you all these to say that the way that I try to approach architecture is as a material practice, but also as a time-based medium. Working in these diverse methods gives me a way to imagine possible worlds, but at the same time engage with the messiness of the present that we're confronting.

I found really fascinating the use of "petrography" as an approach and as a meta-discipline, let's say, for your Ph.D. and I'm very much drawn by your perspective in the metamorphic and non-static qualities of rocks and how all the earthly transformations can offer us a better understanding of the past and present. Actually, in past conversations, I've discussed with other participants about the need for a renewed attentiveness to the present. But I'm thinking, what about the future? How can architecture and studies in the natural and built forms that surround us generate new forms and infrastructures as well as communities of care?

That's a really great question. One I ask myself daily. But to go back to the beginning, rocks embody energy. So, a close look at rocks can tell us about the history of the Earth. Afterall, it's through the age of rocks that we know how old the Earth is. They do embody histories of a transformation of matter and my field -architecture- is the shaping of the built environment. I also think about matter and form in a similar way because they are about transformations through time. And so, past, present and future are bound together with the stuff that we find on the ground, whether this stuff are buildings or whether these are rocks. But they all tell a story. I did a project some time ago titled "The Dark Ecology of Magnitogorsk", and that was inspired by the philosophical thinking of Timothy Morton, who writes about ecology and nature, not as this "Other" that is outside, but rather as an environment that we're all in together. He gives a great example, that of the Sherlock Holmes type of detective who is outside of the story and he's following the clues, but he argues that we should be more like the noir detective, who is inside the story, and maybe some of the clues are him. You know, he may be the suspect. And so, this project "The Dark Ecology of Magnitogorsk is about creating a territorial concept on the wasteland. This idea that you have a terrain that typically conveys something that's unwanted, that's exhausted and that is useless. It's a project about mining and post-industrial mining terrains and the project aims to rethink various emerging ecological strategies of remediation, the act of cleaning up, but often the attempt and the anxiety to erase all these material traces of production. But I'm interested in the project to explore also a terrain of ambiguity, of what is natural, what is manmade, what is clean, what's dirty, what do we consider to be unwanted or desired. It rejects all these polarities and instead embraces this messy whole as it comes with various material or chemical or so-called natural manifestations. And by embracing it, the project kind of reveals surprising architectural potentials. By engaging with this degradation, I take on architecture and infrastructure as time-based and also chemically-induced operations. I recognize the potential and the possibilities out of cleaning out, but I also engage with what are the byproducts of such operations as a new way to build. So, I would say that care here takes the form of maintenance and the form of paying attention to things that are typically unwanted.

Why did you name it dark ecology?

The term is actually coined by Timothy Morton in his book "Ecology Without Nature" and it's also something that then Žižek took on and also wrote about. Mine is "The Dark Ecology of Magnitogorsk", because I'm writing about this Russian city, but the concept really speaks about -perhaps that's where the dark comes in- that what we have done to the environment is not reversible. So, one has to acknowledge that, to embrace it and then see how one can operate moving forward, rather than trying to erase or pretend that by a certain action, everything can go back to a form that can never really be attained again.

I see. In a way, we need to build new narratives and new imaginaries to move forward and that ties a lot with my next question. Your practice takes different forms that include writings and exhibitions and it is my sense that fiction plays a crucial role in your practice. Would you like to elaborate on that?

Yes, that is really spot on, Myrto! Fiction is at the center. My work operates strongly around fiction as a way of writing, but also in the representations that I produce to design projects. It's a way to engage with various processes. So again, like in 'alos'. The 's' in alos is about stories. So, it's about story rather than history. And even in architecture projects I like to employ fiction about as to how one can live in a space, to write the story about how the space will change through time and through use. Also, in my theoretical work, I try to avert from academic styles of writing, but rather use fiction as a storytelling device, which allows me then to engage with serious questions of history and theory. I find that it becomes more expansive this way because a story can incorporate multiple viewpoints. And back to some of the architecture projects, using collage or models or videos, rather than the typical photorealistic renderings is one way to visually construct fictions. This is not a device for me to escape reality, but rather it offers an expanded understanding of what the project is and what it can be and what it can generate. That's often a conversation I have with the team or students, that renderings are flat and devoid of any imagination and fiction is really about generating a creative imagination and the potential about an idea or about the project.

I understand that your practice includes a lot of research, but you also have an architectural practice where you're actually commissioned to construct or take care of buildings, and that's where functionality comes into play. How does an ecological thinking inform your practice?

First, thank you for the super accurate reading of my work. This really means a lot. But to your question, indeed, my practice involves building and designing, but also researching and writing. That's all in equal parts and that's intentional. In that respect, I'm trying to create an ecology of thought and values that go from one aspect of the practice into the other. They're not separate entities. Regarding an ecological thinking, for me it is about turning our attention to the things that we are surrounded by and examining how they came to be and how they evolve. That can range from human relationships in space, about materials that are used, about practices of building, extraction processes, et cetera. I'll share with you a thought that I very much identify with and it's not by an architect, but it's by a political scientist, Joan Tronto. She says that "rather than thinking of buildings as things, thinking of them in relationships with ongoing environments, people, flora and fauna that exist through time as well as in space changes the approach fundamentally". This really, for me, embodies all the values that architecture should be responding today and it speaks very much to what I think of ecology.

Thank you and I'm very glad that you shared all this valuable information and text beforehand and I had the chance to read more about what you're interested in and your research. Now, I would like to move a little bit the conversation and ask you more specifically about The School of Infinite Rehearsals. I think we've covered many things, but I would be interested to know, since you have been engaging many years with all the questions that were brought forward by this program, what prompted you to apply?

I read the call on e-flux in the middle of the quarantine.

This was last year.

Yes, last year, quarantine number one and in Zurich, actually, and I just found that it resonated with so many of the questions that my work has been asking for some time now. For me, it was this unique opportunity to ask those questions but in a conversation with a group and that was not a group of architects, but a multidisciplinary perspective. Increasingly I am finding that we are in a moment where human and more-than-human processes are so entangled that in order to make sense of it, it's really necessary to bring voices from different fields together. That's what The School of Infinite Rehearsals represented for me.

Also, speaking about the lockdown, the fact that we live in a certain kind of isolation from other people, I think having the opportunity to spend some time with other people in a physical space must make a difference. During these six weeks of the program, how did you see your practice merging with the collective one?

I think it was a very organic process and I think the workshop that you organized Myrto for us in the beginning really helped also to get there. Now, in terms of my own practice and what we collectively developed. I work a lot with water, as I mentioned, in my own PhD research on the thermal baths and natural resources in Greece at the end of the 19th and 20th century. But somehow, through our collective discussions here at AiR, we found that water embodied values about ecology and about our respective practices that we all identified with. So, it kind of became not the common ground, but the common medium, the common liquid. From my perspective, I brought in the mineral quality of water, which is also what I'm writing about for the forthcoming publication, because water obtains all its healing properties by coming into contact with rocks. So again, this is where things get tied together, whether this is magnesium or other minerals. By looking into bodies of water collectively and me through my own research on the mineral, I found a way to also look at how this mineral quality can generate environments or architectures, infrastructures and economies through the conversations we were having with the group.

I see. Thank you for participating in the workshop that we did with Manolis that ended up with you creating all together a ritual where water was involved. From the first day, water was there for you and we were really glad to be part of that process. In order to further expand on this collective research, you decided to travel together to the very edge of Greece to visit the biotope formed by the two Prespes lakes and I'm curious to know how did you make this decision collectively and what were your findings there?

As you've probably witnessed, it was a long process, also vetting out different sites, but we, in a way, created a list of sites that had for us properties around water that we wanted to investigate and look into further. Now, about Prespes. We collectively defined a number of hypotheses about the place and what Prespes represents, what we think they are about, how qualities of water are manifest in this site and what they generate. So, when we got there we were to test out those hypotheses and I think one of the main decisions about going there is that Prespes kind of represents this frontier and this edge and the boundaries between different countries are defined in the water, aside from the fact that it's this very rich ecosystem. What else we found there? I mean, personally, I was very fascinated with this idea that although there is this boundary that is not clear -you can't see it- you can feel it in the chemistry of the water because different countries use different fertilizers, for instance, that are all draining in different parts of the lakes. In a way, you can tell borders through the different chemicals that are found in the water and also there are different geologic relationships, that I won't get into because I'm writing about it. I don't want to spoil it.

Let it be a surprise.

Yes. Each one of us sort of looked at different elements there and also, I wanted to treat the trip as a journey. For me it wasn't just about going to Prespes, but making stops along the way. I stopped at Thermopyles with Lito, and Kammena Vourla, and Smokovo and Meteora. It was also transversing different bodies of water from Athens all the way to the North of Greece and back.

And you made these stops in order to visit certain thermal springs that exist in these places.

That's right. Yes!

Well, I've heard so many stories about Prespes and I would really like to visit that place very soon. I'm wondering have you ever visited a site where you didn't have to do something on it or with it? I mean, working as an architect for many years, how was it for you to visit a site without a particular end goal?

So, in a professional practice, since I have never visited a site with an end goal as a research project. I mean, of course, I've traveled a lot and I visit sites for my own interests, but nothing like this trip that we undertook as part of the residency program. For me, it was extremely liberating to be there and have this ability to observe and to research, but without the pressure to generate a project with a timeline. So, I also decided to do something, to not do something that I typically do, which is not to sketch, but to rather observe and also collect specimens there.

Breaking the old habits.

Yes.

Great. I think I know the answer to the next question, but I'm still going to ask it. What did you bring back from Prespes?

Rocks!

Of course, and beans!

True. Beans too.

What was there with the beans? What happened?

What became increasingly very strong in our conversations was the cultivation of beans around the lake and for me it was a big question as to why beans. So, I kept asking this question to everybody that we met. "Why beans, why beans?" And we've had very interesting conversations about how at some point when monocultures were really pushed in Europe, they somehow thought that beans are good for this terrain. So, people started to cultivate beans. They became successful. But also beans take up a lot of resources. They may not necessarily be the best thing to cultivate there. It's just that they became a way to use the land and secure profit, et cetera, et cetera. If you see something in a site that is dominant, I think it's worth asking why it's there.

And you brought back some delicious beans, actually.

True.

Really glad to have tasted them. I think that's the perfect ending to this discussion. But before we close, I would like to know, what are your plans for the near future?

As we discussed I'm still writing my PhD dissertation and it's really about airs, waters and places around Greece. So, I'm also hoping to get to visit more sites now that things are opening up again. I'm writing this PhD at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH in Zurich, but in parallel, I have my architecture practice where I'm working on a couple of projects that are residential, but also one public project that will start soon and that engages both water and geology and ecology. So, I'm hoping that some of these ideas and directions we're talking about will find their way also in built form.

Well, thank you very much for this discussion "on airs, waters and places". I know we share this common interest in the Hippocratic corpus and I'm very glad about that. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Thank you so much, Myrto!

Thank you!

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series, and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.