The Invisible

There is so much going on in the early stages of construction that becomes completely invisible as the structure progresses.

Just like so many things in life, it is hard to appreciate the unnoticed. Of course there is a good reason why our consciousness doesn’t pay too much attention to the fine-grained details of our existence. For example, if we had to be aware of our breathing each time our bodies needed oxygen, what kind of life would that be? If we had to remember to turn on our immune system when encountering potentially harmful substances, we’d all be extinct.

When we walk into a building, do we wonder about the foundation, the plumbing, the electrical wires, or the sweat (and sometime blood) of the workers that fell upon surfaces that later became painted or polished?

This worker is hand-tying a steel column that will soon have a temporary wooden box around it, in order to keep the poured concrete in the proper shape.

For months and months a crew of workers toil away at bringing a structure to life, and in the end the guests who enter and exit the spaces are completely unaware of the people who built the structure and the effort involved. It is as if too much awareness of the world around us is, in a strange way, toxic. We can only survive with minimal awareness of the infinite amount of gears that turn and the cosmic grease that keeps it all in motion.

These iron “boxes” are also bent into shape manually. Behind them are rusting thin steel mesh “sheets” that were made by machine. The iron boxes are placed into holes and sit horizontally, on top of 2-4 vertical columns that have laboriously been set 3-5 meters into the ground. These “boxes” become a stable platform for the vertical columns that will support the three levels of the future structure.

 

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