Parallel Realities

PARALLEL REALITIES
by Enrico Berta & Sandro Fritschi

The act of building sets a vast array of bodies in motion. Every material, every building part, the whole composition of a building is an accumulation of human labour, manifesting the physical effort of the workers who shaped and assembled it.

PARALLEL REALITIES investigates the broader social context of human labour as a fundamental part in the construction of our buildings. From sourcing raw materials to laying the final brick, each step is part of an immense effort—one that not only comes at cost to ecosystems but also to the workers involved. The extraction of resources comes along with the extraction of human energy, both of which are consumed in the creation of built environments.

The nature of labor varies widely across different tasks, requiring workers to adapt to a range of environments, each with its own challenges and demands. Some processes take place in highly specialized work environments, exposing workers to conditions that require various forms of protection or physical adaptation, contrasted by highly digital and automated environments. Additionally, every work environment is complemented by spaces that cater to social, physical, and restorative needs.

Beyond the visible products of labor, every work environment produces conditions of vulnerability and solidarity, resilience and adaptability. These conditions, in turn, shape the workers‘ operative movements, which can be seen as choreographies of manual labor, illustrating the symbiotic relationship between worker and machine, and manifesting the rhythms of different hands working together.

By documenting these environments and processes, PARALLEL REALITIES seeks to weave the diverse forms of labor into a cohesive narrative, highlighting the immense collective human effort behind construction. It strives to make the various work conditions tangible, capturing raw and uncensored realities. Through this lens, construction emerges not merely as a mechanical process but as a deeply human one.

Supervision: Sebastiaan Loosen