The Weight of Rubble
Juan Fernández González (MArch I ’25)
The Weight of Rubble proposes a structural system to build with rubble from demolished buildings in its granular material form. The project redistributes materials within an urban site through a gravity-powered system of cables and buckets to create a new architecture. A tensile catenary structure, which reimagines the gabion wall, uses the weight of piles of rubble to anchor and stabilize itself.
The construction system takes inspiration from the mining industry’s aerial ropeways, used for transporting granular materials across landscapes. Rather than using such technologies for material extraction, the project argues that they could raise the quality of material waste in urban contexts.
Mexico City’s Plaza Condesa, a performance space damaged by the 2017 earthquake, is transformed into the Theater of Rubble. A light structure aims to create beauty from the remnants of a demolished building, honoring the city’s collective memory. Piles of rubble form the stages’ backdrop, and the first performance is the construction of the theater itself.
Geometric studies, carried out both digitally and physically, explore the properties of granular materials. These materials exhibit self-organized criticality, a property in which stability is continuously restored. Since many buildings begin and end their lives as piles of rubble, The Weight of Rubble questions how architecture could embrace granular materials and their formal language.