Circus of Objects (2025) by Wei Li is an urban allegory that frames architecture as a new mode of production—recycling, repairing, and reusing abandoned objects found within the city.
Intervening in damage does not simply mean adding something new—such interventions themselves constitute another form of damage. Museums, for example, conserve animals through taxidermy or assign historical objects high economic value under the guise of protection, yet in doing so, they detach these items from their original, living contexts. In contrast, my design proposes a new typology of zoo—one in which architecture operates as a living creature. By metabolizing damaged matter, the architecture generates renewed life, reframing urban decay not as loss, but as a process of continual rebirth.
To control damage is not to build anew, but to accept an allegorical order—one where production ceases, matter is endlessly repurposed, and we learn to live, indefinitely, with what already surrounds us.
