José Spaniol has built an observatory, made of adobe _ traditional building process that consists of pounding the earth with natural cements _ on the Matarazzo vacant lot. A strange construction, four walls without roof, rising in the middle of that desert. Four walls of about 16 feet high, not linked by the vertexes, that seem a monument raised in prehistoric times.

Not by chance it is an earth construction. The space in this area is imposing for its weight and material consistency. Here, it is very difficult to surpass the limit of matter, of substance. It is difficult to surpass the sobriety of the existent constructions. So, the action consisted of recomposing what was already there. It didn't add or removed anything. The material for each wall was removed from the spot in front of it, leaving a cutting on the ground. Mirroring the elevation, as if earth had been displaced and erected. The constructive process of adobe leaves holes, when the scaffolds are removed. These holes, that appear in a 3-feet interval array when the molds are moved upward, become points to observe the landscape. The observatory establishes a relationship between what is risen and what is weighed. It serves to cut out and to highlight the large chimneys and the lot's extension. It leads to the landscape's contemplation, to be looking at what already existed in the place.

The earth walls seem to reveal what is buried there. They move the underground to draw out the profile that that mass had one day. The material is already there: the point is to model things, to give them form. The ruin gives an idea of what happened, but is not complete anymore, it doesn't have a form anymore. So, the installation rescues all the work that happened there, the effort of generations, sowed in that land.

That primitive process of construction _ adobe _ makes everything look older than it really is. As if the factory _ that actually functioned up to three decades ago _ belonged to a much previous time. The adobe construction, as the first houses of the city, refers to an antiquity that surpasses the debris. Not the past, lost because of systematic demolition, but a wider time, an originating moment. These archaic procedures seem to refer to a prehistory, to immemorial experiences, to constructions that stand there forever. The red earth, coming out from the deep, is as old as the city.