Prop Project

The potential of architecture to reveal content through experience.

Modern filling,
temple at Angor Wat,
Siem Riep, Cambodia.

The inspiration for the prop project came while sitting in the shadow of three small temples in Angor Wat. It was 1997, and the threat of the Khmer Rouge was on the wane (just 4 weeks after we left the last reported violence occured in a shoot-out at the national airport); not a lot was happening yet in the way of tourism or preservation in Siem Reap. If you look at the temple door to the right, you can see that the interior has been cast solid with concrete to stabilize the structure above. The modern intervention is disguised here to resemble the original temple, but, not convincingly. Rather than trying to and failing at making the structural prop look like something that was there before, what if this had fix marked the time it was inserted, and even called attention to the forces of gravity or weathering?

Since then we’ve visited World Heritage sites over a decade of travel. Exploring this question with students, we’ve asked them to design physical props to stabilize historical and urban artifacts.

For this work, a prop was defined as something that could articulate forces exerted by the downward pull of gravity and time –-marks often wiped away by conservators. An unexpected side effect was the ability for these small acts to register spatial and cultural memories. They defy the tendency of heritage sites to become museums by calling out the physical evidence of materiality and time. Revealing latent forces often unperceived by the visitor, the prop’s small act of architecture reflects the role of architecture from the times of the Greek temples: “Standing there, it opens up a world.” (Heidegger).

Related Projects
Links to student props prop-ER medicant [Curtain] | prop [Kyongii] | prop [ASU].