Besler & Sons invites the public to collaboratively build an ensemble of on-site storage sheds and construction offices. Removable storage and office spaces can be found on most active construction sites, both residential and commercial. Such spaces can be understood as part of a suite of precursors for the building process, a sequence of material interactions and assembly steps that ultimately aim to articulate one discrete piece of architecture, then to disappear from the site forever. Like the “teasers” and “trailers” that presage the summer blockbuster season, but are generally of no use once the feature film is released, these precursory storage and office spaces are typically under-considered, providing the public with precious few details about the office complex, house, or apartment building that their presence portends. Rather than revealing details, motives, and agendas, they often seem to strategically obscure. Just because the trailers are good, doesn’t mean the movie is always worth seeing.
When considered as a part of the context of a neighborhood, such spaces could be seen as challenging commonly held qualities of permanence and immutability in the built environment, suggesting temporariness, and straddling everyday domestic life, commercial sites, and construction contexts. On-site storage sheds and construction trailers are anonymous and suggest an informality, deflecting attention to something yet to come.
In a series of weekend workshops, participants laid out and built a suite of office and storage spaces on site, organizing and reorganizing the plan of the construction site, as a way of rehearsing the anticipated building process that the site might one day accommodate. For young architectural practitioners, these workshops turn the construction site into a sort of “vision board” or aspirational warm-up routine; A trailer for a movie that might never be released.
