Painted Protection

It's interesting to note that preservation strategies have been put in place during the times when the buildings themselves were brand new, when their existence was asserted and their decay impossible and preservation irrelevant. Above is a picture of the brackets painted white in a Japanese temple structure at the Higashi Honganji. At first glance, this might seem like a cosmetic treatment, a whitening to preserve some sort of harmonious ideal of simplicity and purity. But really such reasoning is second-hand. At least during their first iteration, the paint themselves were formulated from brunt oyster shells. The white of the paint is no doubt the result of the calcium molecules present with the source of the material. Painting the wood white with a mineral (that is coincidentally abundant in the sea islands of Japan) was a measure put in place to deter termites, the little insects that devour wooden structures as their food source. The duality of the painting, one to physically protect and the other to aesthetically protect (maybe from the brashness of the raw wood) is exemplary for it's efficiency and subtlety. At the same time, it begs the question that if wooden structural is ephemeral, should the attempt be to preserve their ephemeral memory or their fragile physicality?



At the same time, the painted protection may be purely symbolic, as with the orange painted structures at the Kyoto Imperial Palace and the Heian Shrine. The intent of the orange color was to symbolize the sun. Somehow, through an unknown process of shinto transmutation, the structure themselves are prevented from fire. Maybe because they are already symbolically on fire? The protection here is symbolic, but the treatment is tectonic. How then, does this color protection relate to similar structure in the three cities? Does color, a tectonic material that always behaves symbolically, preserve structure? Perhaps the effect of tectonic memory and ritual should be noted for their efforts at preservation. Even if the species themselves are still prone to physical destruction, the esoteric painted protection seems to point out a logical flaw: if the original building still stands, would it not be due to the protective effect of the symbolism? Whose authority it is to say that the building still stands due to this and not that? As for tectonics, at the very least the paint job keeps it rainproof, and perhaps that's the best that I can hope for in this futile discussion for preservation.