In our cult of the new and the shiny, it’s sometimes refreshing to remember that it’s possible to make new things out of old things that look old. No, seriously, it’s possible. And Jan Korbes Garbage Architecture has many projects to prove it. Coming from the Gordon Matta-Clark school of architecture, Jan Korbes follows a lot of threads at once. There are a lot of small furniture pieces involving scrap wood and recycled car tires. Some are interesting, some you’ve seen before, but in every instance he doesn’t stop experimenting.
Where it starts to get really interesting is when the objects start to become architecture, or pieces of architecture. The Zee Stair is a great example: an old harbor pole is sawn again to become a beautiful, unexpected stair. Sinus Stairs II takes this a step farther by recycling old doors to create a screen-like staircase, one that begins to take on the mass and shape of a building. Optrek Tranvaal takes recovered doors from other projects and recycles them into a skylight/balcony cut not unlike some of Matta-Clark’s late proposals, where the envelope of the building is cut to create something entirely new. This is someone we’re going to be checking in on from time to time. We can’t wait for the truly big projects to begin.
Designer: Jan Korbes Garbage
