Graduation project
Guilty Power Structures
Phillipp Pals
# “This project started playfully but became more serious, so many institutions of power are failing.”
We live in a society where people are experiencing guilt for things they have no control over. How can this unbearable feeling be expressed? Phillipp Pals found the perfect embodiment in bitumen. A fossil fuel by-product, it has sinister connotations of contamination and impurity. Unable to support itself, when used alone as a construction material bitumen sags and collapses. Architecture has long been the medium for established power to express itself, whether in the domes of churches or the staircases of courthouses. Infuse these structures with the element of guilt and how do they react? They buckle, crumple and sink under the heat of the sun, releasing their sorry deficiencies for social or environmental damage done.