voussoirs

Sunday, 2 August 2026

ARCHITECTURE AS AMAZING, ARTFUL GAZING

The report declared that the Gehry Abu Dhabi Guggenheim would open in December:

https://www.dezeen.com/2026/07/28/frank-gehry-guggenheim-abu-dhabi-december-opening/

The text was accompanied by a set of images that illustrate the guile of the ‘arty’ photograph that is now the slick expression for our architecture today. It has become the way in which we are currently informed about a building, with the highlighting of bits and pieces in fragments that suggest the idea that this strategy captures the very heart and meaning of place, its essence. We are presented with the camera’s exploration of the delights of the photographic eye, its peculiarities, where precisely framed details illustrate a particular way of seeing a collection of carefully selected, juxtaposed tiny portions and parts of a project in a particular manner, a presentation that comes with the suggestion that this exotic wonderment expresses the experience of the building as a whole – in this case, Gehry’s Guggenheim. There seems to be two things working here with this different project, driving its expression: one expects a WOW! building from Gehry; and a ‘Guggenheim’ has to be unusual because of the Wright example in New York. The photographs seem to seek out and highlight the extremes of this desired amazement.

Wright's Guggenheim, New York.

Nouvel's Louvre, Abu Dhabi.

We have the images of the exteriors displaying the grand ‘fruit salad’ display of the assemblage from a few different angles, alone - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-gehry-talk-domes-cones-and-inspired.html. The context is removed, avoided if it can be. Only in a couple of details does one get a glimpse of Nouvel’s Louvre dome nearby, as an aside. Neither project cares about anything else; such is the nature of Starchitecture. There are no interiors illustrated, not even with a quirky lens; nothing in any detail image reveals the ground or floor plane walked on as the lens pans in an upwards direction, towards the Star’s work, at the considered interplay of fragmented forms. There is no sense of entry, no space or place to consider. There is nothing that suggests being there, with the building sensed by the nonchalant eye; felt; experienced. The only ‘inner’ glimpse is an oculus, but the lens points vertically to the sky creating an abstraction to match the others. Where is the floor; the walk through; the human touch - space and place? Architectural publishing has become as flimsy, precious, and fanciful as haute couture fashion where chosen appearances capturing uniquely framed, startling glimpses are artfully presented to allure.

The suggestion is that this is all that architecture has become – stylish appearance. The hollowness of the intent here is revealed by Gehry himself in his talk see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-gehry-talk-domes-cones-and-inspired.html. In his troubling presentation, that is itself a random ‘fruit salad’ of thoughts, Gehry strangely attempts to justify his vision as a purely rational concept, as if seeking redemption for his deliberate excesses.

Foster's dome, Berlin.

One wonders. Do any of these layered forms have stairs inside like, e.g. Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence? Maybe? There is the glimpse of stairs and a walkway in one image. Will this passageway become a tourist opportunity like the access in this great dome, and that of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; and Foster's dome in Berlin?

There seems to be none of the structural rigour with the elegance of its integrity here. Things appear to be just made to work, however, wherever. One senses that it is a matter of whatever the whim desires, with no budget limits: just do it. Could one see this as the new ‘Nike’ approach in architecture? Is the aim to outdo the Bilbao Guggenheim, to create a new wonder of the world for tourism? One is left admiring the engineering mind that made this inspired scribble a building. Architecturally one has to remain concerned, if only on the principle of replication, be this, say, like the repetitive terrace houses in a street, or Palladio’s work that has inspired projects across the world. This project is a real worry. Is it the grandest the celebration of chaos ever? Perhaps it is the best expression of our times, with its mishmash of endless lies, fake news, spin, egocentricity, self-interest, and blatant narcissism becoming the norm? The irony here is that this madness delights in classicism as its preferred expression.

Panama Biomuseo.

Bilbao Guggenheim.

Where are the plans and sections of this project? It is not that they do not exist, as the engineering reports reveal – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-gehry-talk-domes-cones-and-inspired.html. It seems that this information is now irrelevant to any understanding of architecture that is fed to us piecemeal, in artful packages, for us to be amazed in our startled wonderment as we are told to assume that this is the experience of the place, its meaning – forget about everything but the spectacle. A Google search for plans and sections reveals nothing but muddles, with drawings for both the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Panama Biomuseo being confused with this Abu Dhabi project. The only similarity is the shambles of the forming. Does it make any difference what such ‘messes’ are, or where? The fact that there are no interior images of the project seems to indicate that only the formal massing holds relevance any for amazement, that function and purpose are an insignificance.

Bilbao Guggenheim.

It is the engineering of this project that can be praised. Turning Gehry's doodles and shaped cardboard massings into a set of real structural forms that can be described and built, is an astonishing feat. The rigour is admirable. It is a shame that the forms detailed for the functions accommodated are treated so casually, ad hoc, as pure whimsy promoted as meaningful gestures that, we are told, are the work of pure genius: so we get the camera seeking to interpret this promoted wonderment in its own unique way, as arty articulations.

Might the movement of the cranes match the lines of the inspirational sketch?

INDIGENISING WITH COUNTRY

The report promoted the new edition of Architecture Australia:

AA August 2026 preview

In a freshly relaunched format, Architecture Australia explores how architects and designers are progressing on the Indigenising of the built environment.

https://architectureau.com/articles/aa-august-2026-preview-Indigenising-built-environment/

The obvious question is: what is Indigenising, complete with its capital ‘I’ . . . and why? Even the definition does not help us understand just how this might be achieved with the built environment.* The suggestion seems to be that it has something to do with regenerating Country.

The preview illustrates a double page spread with the bold title Regenerating Country. Throughout this text, ‘Country’ is always spelt with a capital ‘C’. The question is: what does the author mean by ‘Country’? The concept of ‘Country’ has been explored previously - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html; and the use of ‘country’ and ‘Country’ has also been reviewed and commented on – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-paradox-of-country.html. The understanding is important, because one has to know or have some idea of what is to be ‘regenerated’ if this is the ambition, before wondering about how this Indigenising might be achieved.

The author begins by explaining: Country is the tangible and intangible systems that we live and thrive within. This broad definition is hardly useful with its loose, motherhood notions that could refer to a variety of matters. As if to explain further by noting that ‘Country’ involves the wisdom of the Elders, while developing the built environment argument, the author continues: Elders assure us that Country does not disappear after the appearance of urban places. However the Country that holds urban centres can be severely harmed by the processes of design and construction, leaving behind unhealthy and unbalanced spaces.

Without really knowing exactly what this is referring to, we are then told that:

All who live on Country benefit from Country and rely on Country being healthy for their own health . . . it is incumbent on all who live and work on Country to play a role in improving its health and wellbeing. The author develops the idea by mutating the notion of ‘Country,’ turning it into a matter to do with health, pointing out that, because of this:

it is critical that built environment professionals seek a regenerative approach to their work.

This strategy of regenerating Country in urban settings can be achieved, so it appears, by acknowledging that it is not only humans who inhabit the places we design . . . Ah, so ‘Country’ is a matter of caring for other living things?

In spite of this logical reduction of the concept, it is still difficult to understand what the author actually means by ‘Country.’ The danger is that the ancient mysticism is rationalised into something similar to James Lovelock’s Ghia hypothesis, to be interpreted as an environmental endeavour that seeks a wholeness in practical inclusiveness, when ‘Country’ is much more than this comfortable, ‘green,’ wholesome thinking.

‘Country’ referred to in this reductionist manner carries as many issues as ‘Country’ being referred to in the cliché acknowledgements that we hear so frequently blurted out on cue by Tom, Dick, and Harry. That ‘Country’ does involve matters known and unknown, tangible and intangible, leaves one wondering just how such uncertain matters can actually be regenerated. What is one supposed to do? Does the approach include blind hope? How might one assess success? This disturbing situation appears to want to commodify ‘Country’ in order to manipulate it intellectually, grasping it as a part of our fashionable jingoism, to join words like segue and narrative, journey and intersection, e.g.: We’ll segue into the intersection of the journey with the narrative of regeneration in indigenising the built environment with Country. Random combinations of words have the benefit of apophenia, defined as the unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness: our propensity to seek patterns, to want to make sense out of situations where there is none: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2011/02/chance-and-design.html. ‘Country’ seems to rely on this quirky circumstance for its current standing.

One has only to read Bill Neidjie’s writings (speakings) to get some sense of the rigour and intensity of the personal, lived involvement in the understanding of these serious spiritual concepts that are a vital part of being. They embody the wholeness of meaning, involving significant issues that can never be spoken of. Statements like: All who live on Country benefit from Country and rely on Country being healthy for their own health, are in danger of turning the whole subject, if not into gobbledegook, then into a clinical issue involving the health and well being of living things that then moves matters on into designing for these factors that now define ‘Country,’ limit its scope, when this perception might only be one tiny aspect of this rich mystic wholeness, perhaps an incidental aside.

‘Country, Country, Country’ statements seem to protest too much; appearing to try too hard to hold the intangible in the palm of the hand as facts; putting too much effort into convincing anyone about what one knows and has rationalised as ‘Country’ and its assumed relevance. It is a little like interpreting indigenous art with a dictionary of aboriginal forms and meanings, believing we have decoded the mystery of the intention when we have only managed an analytic explanation of a rich emotional understanding and expression that is far different to what we see as arty self-expression, leaving its inner substance as an amorphous fuzz that is too difficult to acknowledge, too easy to be set aside, ignored as something else – an irrelevance created by the superstitious primitive mind that has been superseded by today’s sophistication.

The concern is that we might be turning ‘Country’ into a factual understanding for fashionable action – Indigisation: whatever this might mean; and whatever outcomes this might envisage in relation to ‘Country.’ One finds that ‘Country’ is just too easily overused as some kind of meaningful ‘stocking stuffer’ in the ad hoc search for depth and referenced quality in indigenous matters.

One has to be careful, for there is the genuine possibility of humbug here; the self-conscious effort to appease lingers as the struggle to be sensitive to indigenous things when we live in a country that voted in the majority to deny these people a ‘Voice.’ The difference between the meaningless repetition of acknowledgement and this popular outcome highlights the terrible, deceitful clash of intentions. If one truly cares for ‘Country’ in design, what does one do? Give the land back? The question was asked in Stutchbury’s Lagoon House project: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/09/lagoon-house.html. There is a dilemma here that is not readily resolved without clever spin. We seem happy to press on doing everything we have in the past while mouthing words to indicate that things are different; that we care. This is the problem with Indigenising.

In amongst all of what might be seen as an emotional pretext, what might be called ‘proper, faux sensitivity’ for ‘Country,’ one hears reports from those involved in remote aboriginal communities of serious and repeated annoying and troubling social matters that have nothing to do with ‘Country’ in ‘Country’ by people who claim ‘Country’ as the heart and soul of their being; embodying a vital, healing necessity. The stresses involved in this situation are intense, driving a cynical interpretation of the ambitions of those who spruik ‘Country’ over and over again, for whatever reason – perhaps because it is the new political theme to segue into, like Indigenising. Are we merely trying to alleviate a deep-rooted guilt with words? If ‘Country’ cannot support ‘Country,’ and its ideals, what is the problem? How can we manage matters?

‘Country’ demands something different, something more humble; more respectful; more responsive to honesty, sincerity; to serious emotional substance: to the integrity of life and feeling itself. One of Bill Neidjie’s books is titled Story About Feeling, (Magabala Books, 1989). A true awareness of ‘Country’ would only emphasise the problems in any rationalisation of its interpretation. ‘If it could be explained, it would have been’ is tradition’s response.#

If we are going to get close to ‘Country,’ or ‘country,’ we need to change ourselves first rather than prescribe a process or strategy for design to regenerate what is at the heart of soul, for, without this involvement, we will find ourselves destroying what we seek to discover, reveal, and regenerate. We will end up only acting on the simplistic ideas that we have devised from the vast mystery of ‘Country’ as we step away proudly declaring the success of our intentions, with the outcomes being published for our exultation, proudly recognising our success.

The problem is that the fashionable ambition to understand/interpret ‘Country’ will grasp the 'country' issues, and discard the matters that appear more quaintly obscure and awkwardly, anecdotally spiritual, as aspects of other, less progressive more gullible, uninformed, perhaps whimsical, naive times, to be seen as something like Aboriginal English, a stumbling apology for expression, rather than seeing these elements as an integral part of the whole complex symbolism of experience named ‘Country,’ leaving the notion schematically neutered, devoid of its essentially mystic rigour. We have to be careful not to transform these ideas and ideals into jargon fit only for social media hype.

The AI Overview tells us:

Indigenising is the active process of integrating Indigenous histories, knowledge systems, cultures, and perspectives into mainstream institutions, policies, and educational frameworks. It works to respect and elevate traditional ways of knowing as legitimate and authentic, rather than letting dominant Western worldviews completely overshadow them.

Core Aspects of Indigenising

Inclusion of Knowledge: Weaving Indigenous worldviews, experiences, and voices naturally into everyday settings like schools and organizations.
Respect and Recognition: Acknowledging the value of local Indigenous heritage, language, and deep connections to the land.
Collaboration: Ensuring the process is led or guided directly by Indigenous peoples in a respectful partnership.
Difference from Decolonisation: While decolonisation often focuses on removing or dismantling colonial power structures and bias, Indigenising focuses on positive addition, visibility, and honor.

See Jon Rhodes’ excellent books on the aboriginal presence in Australia, how it can be understood, and how it has been treated:

Cage of Ghosts, 2018.

Whitefella Way, 2022.

3 AUG 26

NOTE

The matter of humbug remains. While the architectural profession is raising the matter of Indigenising the built environment and caring for Country, our governments are changing regulations to make it easier for developers to bypass existing conservation and planning laws; see - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/03/a-new-queensland-bill-aims-to-streamline-major-projects-matt-and-caitlin-fear-it-could-hand-their-farm-to-developers?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Experts say new power to bypass conservation and planning regulations are incredibly broad and could let the state effectively fast-track any project it wants.

The report mentions the concerns of some Springbrook residents. Springbrook National Park is a World Heritage listed site - for its unique biodiversity. In spite of this, governments are still trying to build a cableway that will deliver 1500 people a day to this plateau that has no sewerage service or reticulated water supply. It is a proposal that has already been rejected three times by the local residents. This time, the intention of the local council has been made clear: to have everything secretly approved before announcing the project. Residents should be alarmed. There is little wonder that there is so much cynicism about Country when matters are managed like this.

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ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.