The persistence of the temporary

This essay examines contemporary architecture through the metaphor of the matsutake mushroom, exploring how ephemerality and instability operate as generative strategies rather than vulnerabilities. Investigating projects by Vidic Grohar, Smiljan Radić, and Decoratelier, it argues that temporary architecture can produce lasting spatial conditions by prioritizing social process, adaptability, and human experience. Ultimately, the text reframes the architect from a static author into a mediator navigating an unpredictable, fast-paced world.

Matsutake

Matsutake is a wild Japanese mushroom that grows in forests across the Northern Hemisphere in symbiosis with pine trees. What makes it remarkable is that it thrives in conditions where one would expect life to be no longer possible. Its growth is highly unpredictable and tied to disturbed, depleted, even degraded, ecosystems. Despite this, matsutake has become a prized commodity, traded globally through Japan. The anthropologist Anna Tsing reads matsutake as a metaphor for contemporary capitalism, which no longer operates as something stable, but rather as a mode of survival and adaptation within conditions we can no longer fully control.[1]

This metaphor is equally useful for thinking about contemporary architectural practice. If matsutake grows in conditions of instability – and if that very instability becomes the condition of its existence – might architecture be understood in a similar way? Not as something that resists change, but as something that embraces it as a fundamental condition of its own operation. Through three examples of contemporary architectural practice, this essay opens a line of inquiry that seeks, above all through a social lens, to address this question.

The contemporary world is marked by a radically accelerated way of life. The sociologist Hartmut Rosa describes this phenomenon as social acceleration, now present across all domains of each individual’s life. As Rosa argues, modern society can maintain its status quo only through constant growth, innovation, and acceleration.[2] Under such conditions, the space we inhabit becomes an increasingly variable element of social life. Climate change, pandemics, political tensions, and many other factors profoundly affect the instability of the built environment – an environment that is increasingly difficult to understand as static.

Architecture, as a practice that plans, shapes, and continually redefines space, is today caught between stability and adaptability, between permanence and temporariness. On one hand, there are buildings conceived as long-term structures. Those are public institutions, single-family houses, infrastructure –  spaces that are programmatically, materially, and structurally predetermined, intended to endure for decades or even centuries. On the other hand, temporary structures are becoming increasingly prevalent: pavilions, installations, improvised spatial adaptations, temporary renovations, and experimental interventions. Often tied to specific events, social situations, or research processes, these structures nonetheless have a strong impact on how space is understood and experienced.

This division, although not always so black or white, typically rests on a material and structural understanding of architecture. Yet reality often shows that permanent architecture does not necessarily produce permanent space – and conversely, temporary architecture does not always result in something temporary.

Drama in Litostroj: Temporariness as Strategy

The project of temporary spaces for the Ljubljana Drama Theatre, designed by Vidic Grohar, emerged under conditions of limited resources and a tight timeframe. It was completed in just ten months, with a low budget of €750/m², using recycled and reusable materials.[3] When situated within the broader context of the former Litostroj industrial hall – which, over the past seven years, has been transformed into a public cultural center through a series of similar interventions – it becomes clear that no single temporary intervention is the essence of this process. What matters is the way of thinking and the strategy that enables such interventions.

The Litostroj site was degraded and seemingly without potential. Architectural interventions there began to operate without any illusions of stability or permanence, gradually producing a lasting spatial condition. Temporariness was not a compromise – it was a strategy.

The key question this example raises is not how long a structure will exist, but whether architecture has created the conditions for a new spatial relationship to emerge. The spatial framework at Litostroj functions not because it is stable, but because it is responsive – because it can adapt to unpredictable social and economic conditions. Crucially, this is achieved less through technological solutions and more through a deep understanding of the processes that produce space in the first place.

Smiljan Radić: Temporariness as Philosophy

If the Litostroj project demonstrates how temporariness can operate as a spatial strategy, the work of Smiljan Radić raises a more fundamental question: what role does architecture have in a contemporary world defined by instability? The Pritzker Prize jury described Radić’s work as one that “privileges fragility over any unfounded demand for certainty.”[4] The fragility of his architecture is not a deficiency, but a philosophical position at the core of his vision.

Radić’s buildings often appear unstable, almost on the verge of disappearance or collapse. Yet it is precisely this apparent ephemerality that produces a powerful spatial experience. Architecture is not defined by its permanence, but by its capacity to establish conditions in which space can be experienced, unfold, and come into being when inhabited by people. What emerges is a distilled and deeply personal spatial experience. Radić understands architecture as a guest within space, not its master. His buildings do not seek to control their surroundings, but to activate them. Architecture thus operates as a temporary presence that enables relationships between people, place, and time to emerge.

Radić sees temporariness as a potential for individual experience, through which meaning is ultimately assigned to an architectural intervention. But what happens when this philosophical stance becomes a collective practice – when architecture is no longer the work of a single author, but the result of an interdisciplinary, perhaps never fully completed process?

Decoratelier: Temporariness as Process

Decoratelier, a multidisciplinary platform based in Brussels and led by Jozef Wouters, represents such a practice. I had the opportunity to engage with their work firsthand, and I think this experience is essential to understanding their approach. Their method is intrinsically experiential, not merely conceptual. The process – bringing together architects, artists, and the local community – rests on the premise that architectural creation is never finished, but always evolving, adapting, and transforming. It is an unfinished process, in which all participants are essential contributors.

One of their projects, Flow, an outdoor pool in the industrial district of Anderlecht in Brussels, was realized in 2021. It is the first outdoor swimming pool in Brussels in over 40 years and, despite its temporary character, functions as a long-term solution. Its steel and timber modular structure was constructed with the involvement of the local community, adding another layer of meaning to the intervention. Today, it provides a place for social interaction, creates employment, and raises awareness of the importance of public outdoor pools as spaces of encounter and relaxation.[5]

The French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, in The Production of Space, argues that space is not a neutral physical category, but a social product – formed through the practices, perceptions, and experiences of those who use it.[6] Architecture, therefore, does not in itself create space, define it, or assign it meaning. It creates the conditions within which space can emerge.

Decoratelier operates precisely in this way. Within uncertain environments such as Brussels, within communities lacking stable income, and under imperfect conditions, it establishes frameworks capable of producing not only physical structures but also social practices and experiences.

The approaches to temporariness discussed here are not parallel, nor do they address temporariness in the same way. The interventions in Litostroj demonstrate that temporariness can become lasting – not as the survival of a single intervention, but as a strategic mode of engaging space. Radić’s philosophy reminds us that fragility and ephemerality are not the opposite of strength, but its condition – and that architecture which does not seek to dominate can create space for authentic experience. Finally, Decoratelier shows that when temporariness becomes collective and interdisciplinary, architecture shifts from the realm of form-making into that of social process.

Architecture becomes lasting when it enables a spatial situation in which people can act, form relationships, create shared experiences, and ultimately contribute to the ongoing development of that space. Change, as is often said, is the only constant. The capacity of (good) architecture lies precisely in its ability to become a collective act.

Temporary architecture – architecture that allows for change, both in its presence and in its potential withdrawal – can produce lasting space capable of coexisting with unstable environments. Meanwhile, permanent architecture, conceived with its own permanence in mind, often remains spatially empty, as its material and structural rigidity excludes the possibility of change.

In this context, the role of the architect also shifts. No longer merely an author who designs and prescribes space once and for all, the architect becomes a mediator – someone capable of reading the environment, recognizing potentials, and nurturing the processes through which architecture, and consequently space itself, can emerge.

Matsutake foragers almost always work independently, without institutional support or guaranteed security. Some years yield abundance, others almost none. And although matsutake is a market commodity, its economy is grounded in uncertainty and unpredictability.[7]

Architectural practice, under contemporary conditions, might need to operate in a similar way: recognizing opportunities within unstable and even degraded environments, and creating the conditions in which space can re-emerge, revitalize itself, and remain open and adaptable.

If architecture enables actions, relationships, and experiences, it can become lasting regardless of its materiality, construction, or temporariness. If it fails to do so, it may endure for centuries without ever becoming a space capable of responding meaningfully to its context. For this reason, ephemerality may not be the opposite of permanence, but its very condition. Architecture that allows for change, temporariness, and openness can produce a space that outlasts the object itself.

At the same time, new questions and doubts inevitably arise – questions this essay does not resolve, yet cannot ignore. Should architecture merely “survive” within today’s unpredictable conditions, or should it actively contribute to spatial regeneration? Do temporary interventions – pop-up culture, improvised spaces, festival pavilions – sometimes become instruments of gentrification and capitalist exploitation, where society finds only temporary refuge before being displaced by the market?

Despite – or perhaps precisely because of – these tensions, temporariness remains a valuable conceptual lens. In a time when change is the only constant, architecture cannot be merely a solution; it must also be a space for critical reflection on its own limitations and potentials. It may well be that the true strength of contemporary architectural practice lies precisely in the tension between ephemerality and permanence, between survival and regeneration.

[1] Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, 3-6.

[2] Hartmut Rosa, „Dynamic Stabilization, the Triple A. Approach to the Good Life, and the Resonance Conception,“ Questions de communication 31 (2017), 437–456.

[3] Vidic Grohar Arhitekti, “Temporary Theatre Drama,”. Accessed 28.3.2026. https://www.vidicgrohar.com/projekti/temporary-theatre-drama.

[4] The Hyatt Foundation, “Smiljan Radić Clarke,” The Pritzker Architecture Prize. Accessed 28.3.2026, https://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/smiljan-radic-clarke#laureate-page-2806.

[5] Ammodo Architecture. “Flow.” Accessed 28.3.2026. https://www.ammodo-architecture.org/projects/flow.

[6]The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 26.

[7] Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, 4.

Project The persistence of the temporary
AuthorŽan Pirman
TypeArchitectural essay
Year2026

AwardsVurnikova Student Award 2026