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THE IMPERCEPTIBLE MOVEMENT OF ARCHITECTURE

Trailer houses, houseboats, Mongolian yurts, Indian teepees, sixties fantasies of walking cities, the Death Star, the Trojan horse, those extravagant buildings that rotate following the sun or open and close their roofs, or the house transported by balloons in "Up", are rare exceptions. 

Architecture does not usually move. 

There can be an illusion of movement when a building imitates certain sculptural effects,
when it has such an organic composition that it seems to grow in the eyes of the spectator,
or when technology allows all kinds of shapes and colors to be projected onto it.
But the architecture continues to stand still.

Only nature...

the rain gushing from a gargoyle or running wildly down a gutter, 
the clouds reflecting on a glass wall, 
vegetation swaying in a gust of wind, the sun casting shifting shadows, 
water gently swaying the distorted reflection of a building; 

or human activity...

by crowding the entrances at certain times of the day, 
by activating an automatic door,
by projecting its silhouette against a blind, 
when heating oneself with fire that comes out in the form of smoke from a chimney, 
when hanging out and collecting laundry in a courtyard,
when opening and closing a window, 
when you protect your privacy by drawing some curtains,
when you leave on a television set that makes the gloom of the room throb, 
by going out to smoke on a balcony or by turning on and off the lights of a façade that seemed mute...

can momentarily animate what is inert, producing a fleeting vibration on a stubbornly static background.

Sometimes, architecture manages to endure by adapting to new uses through very important changes -demolitions, additions- but this movement is so slow that we do not perceive it either. Only the before and after.

When it does not adapt, everything that was mobile (drawbridges, weeping walls, windmill blades, waterwheels, retractable awnings, sliding shutters, adjustable louvers, projecting or sash windows, weather vanes, revolving doors, banners and banners) gradually degrades, detaches from the structure and disappears. 

Until only the immobile remains.

The ruin.