Principles in the labyrinth: Clashes between Nature and Culture.

Just as the vast Khumbu Glacier keeps pushing giant rocks down the valley at the foot of Mount Everest, glaciers of the distant past deposited large boulders on the bedrock beneath Manhattan. This foundation molded by ice now anchors the iconic skyline. Such linkages between nature and culture, with all the geopolitical eruptions they have provoked, are central to the work of Felix Breidenbach (b. Langen near Frankfurt, 1986; lives and works in Frankfurt). In his practice he reflects upon architecture and its built spaces as well as a vision of the world as a perpetual cycle.

Such a vision underlies the cyclical narrative laid out in the book Foundation (13). In thirteen chapters, Breidenbach grapples with the hubris of imperialist forms of society. Tracing the arc of human history, he analyzes episodes of social and economic challenge and condenses them in drawings and photographic works. Each of the chapters, which build on one another like the levels of a tower, is introduced by a personal note. The essays-the book's lobby, as it were-were contributed by Franco Berardi, Pujan Karambeigi und Anna Lena Seiser.