Tuesday, 25 March 2014

WHAT IS A HANDLE?

Is a knob a handle, or is it simply a knob as named? What is a handle? We use words thoughtlessly in one way, as it should be. Learning is the process of the transformation of the self-conscious into the unselfconscious, creating a zone of thoughtlessness that allows other more complex, more subtle matters to be entertained. Consider learning to play the piano or to ride a bike: experience becomes finer and richer, so that eventually one is able to play Beethoven with all of its intricacies and innuendos, and develop skills and stamina to ride in le Tour. With time and some wary rational reflection, familiar words often appear puzzling, as strangers. The experience is somewhat like the questioning of the spelling of a common word that suddenly appears doubtful when isolated by the query and enquiry. Why do we call anything a handle - indeed, a knob? What characteristics might something have to offer for it to be labelled a ‘handle’? The clue could obviously be in ‘hand’ - le; that it has something to do with the hand and the handling of things. ‘Handling’ is an interesting word that seems to be close to ‘handle,’ but it doesn’t help much with our question about the characteristics of a handle.

The dictionary frequently is a good place to start dismantling words: the ‘unpacking’ of the idea/concept is the latest jargon phrase for this analysis. The idea seems to hold the same sense as the unpacking of a parcel, to see what is inside. On ‘handle,’ the dictionary records a wide-ranging set of meanings that extends the simplistic notion of a physical hand:

HANDLE

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/handle

handle

Use Handle in a sentence

han·dle

[han-dl] Show IPA

noun

a part of a thing made specifically to be grasped or held by the hand.

that which may be held, seized, grasped, or taken advantage of in effecting a purpose: The clue was ahandle for solving the mystery.

Slang.

a person's name, especially the given name.

a person's alias, nickname, or code name.

a name or term by which something is known, described, or explained.

the total amount wagered on an event, series of events, or for an entire season or seasons, as at agambling casino or in horse racing: The track handle for the day was over a million dollars.

the total amount of money taken in by a business concern on one transaction, sale, event, or seriesof transactions, or during a specific period, especially by a theater, nightclub, sports arena, resorthotel, or the like.

Relevant Questions

How To Handle Panic Attacks

How To Handle A Hamster

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How To Handle It

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verb (used with object), han·dled, han·dling.

to touch, pick up, carry, or feel with the hand or hands; use the hands on; take hold of.

to manage, deal with, or be responsible for: My wife handles the household accounts. This computerhandles all our billing.

10.

to use or employ, especially in a particular manner; manipulate: to handle color expertly in painting.

11.

to manage, direct, train, or control: to handle troops.

12.

to deal with (a subject, theme, argument, etc.): The poem handled the problem of instinct versusintellect.

verb (used without object), han·dled, han·dling.

15.

to behave or perform in a particular way when handled, directed, managed, etc.: The troops handledwell. The jet was handling poorly.

Idioms

16.

fly off the handle, Informal. to become very agitated or angry, especially without warning oradequate reason: I can't imagine why he flew off the handle like that.

17.

get / have a handle on, to acquire an understanding or knowledge of: Can you get a handle on whatyour new boss expects?

Origin:
before 900; (noun) Middle English handel, Old English hand ( e ) le, derivative of hand; (v.) Middle Englishhandelen, Old English handlian (cognate with German handlen, Old Norse hǫndla to seize); derivative ofhand

Related forms

han·dle·a·ble, adjective

han·dle·a·bil·i·ty, noun

han·dle·less, adjective

o·ver·han·dle, verb (used with object), o·ver·han·dled, o·ver·han·dling.

pre·han·dle, verb (used with object), pre·han·dled, pre·han·dling.

Synonyms
14. sell, vend, carry, market; hawk, peddle.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2014.
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Link To handle

Collins

World English Dictionary

handle (ˈhænd ə l)

— n
1.	the part of a utensil, drawer, etc, designed to be held in order to move, use, or pick up the object
2.	( NZ ) a glass beer mug with a handle
3.	slang a person's name or title
4.	a CB radio slang name for call sign
5.	an opportunity, reason, or excuse for doing something: his background served as a handle for theirmockery
6.	the quality, as of textiles, perceived by touching or feeling
7.	the total amount of a bet on a horse race or similar event
8.	informal fly off the handle to become suddenly extremely angry

— vb
9.	to pick up and hold, move, or touch with the hands
10.	to operate or employ using the hands: the boy handled the reins well
11.	to have power or control over: my wife handles my investments
12.	to manage successfully: a secretary must be able to handle clients
13.	to discuss (a theme, subject, etc)
14.	to deal with or treat in a specified way: I was handled with great tact
15.	to trade or deal in (specified merchandise)
16.	( intr ) to react or respond in a specified way to operation or control: the car handles well on bends

[Old English; related to Old Saxon handlon (vb), Old High German hantilla towel]

'handleable

— *adj*

'handled

— *adj*

'handleless

— *adj*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

handle

O.E. handle, formed from hand in the sense of a tool in the way thimble was formed from thumb. The verbis O.E. handlian "to touch or move with the hands." Akin to O.N. höndla "th seize, capture," Dan. handle"to trade, deal," Ger. handeln "to bargain, trade." The commercial sense was weaker in

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

Slang Dictionary

handle definition

1. n.
a person's name or nickname. (Western jargon and then citizens band radio.) : My handle is Goober. Youcan call me Goob.

2. n.
a way of dealing with something; a grasp of a problem. : As soon as I get a handle on this Wilson matter, I'llgive you a buzz.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw-Hill Education.
Cite This Source

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

handle definition

1. A simple item of data that identifies a resource. For example, a Unix file handle identifies an open fileand associated data such as whether it was opened for read or write and the current read/write position.On the Macintosh, a handle is a pointer to a pointer to some dynamically-allocated memory. The extralevel of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction or garbage collection without invalidatingapplication program references to the allocated memory.
2. An alias used intended to conceal a user's true identity in an electronic message. The term is commonon Citizen's Band and other amateur radio but, in that context usually means the user's real name asFCC rules forbid concealing one's identity.
Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of crackers, weenies, spods, and other lower forms of networklife; true hackers travel on their own reputations.
Compare nick.
[ Jargon File]
3. domain handle.
(2004-07-20)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010 http://foldoc.org
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

handle

In addition to the idioms beginning with handle, also see fly off the handle; get a fix (handle) on.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
Cite This Source

The complexity of the term is clearly exposed. The defined clarity of the diversity of contexts and meanings is a little surprising. While one might have thought of associating something like a drawer handle or a handle on a mug with the idea of the name, there are numerous other ways in which the word can hold meaning. Some of these seem to use the word as an analogy, or a metaphor in ordinary speech, adapting and expanding the sense of holding onto something with a handle: getting a grasp on things, anything. This usage, though interesting, can be put aside because the first question is asking about the form of a handle and any other designated properties that might be needed in an object or a section of it, for it to be categorized as the ‘handle’ part or portion.

While it is all about words and ideas, the phrase, ‘Getting a handle’ on some notion, does still help us understand some characteristic of the concept. It has to do with managing some idea, comprehending it, controlling it; doing something specific to or with it. In the sense of an object, the first two meanings seem to be the most inclusive:

a part of a thing made specifically to be grasped by the hand.

that which may be held, seized, grasped, or taken advantage of in effecting a purpose.

In the context of our considered drawer, one has to ask why a certain form of grip is called a ‘knob’ rather than a ‘handle’. What is a knob that it seems so different to a handle as to have a different name? If designers are to understand anything, they need to know about these differences because they could have significant implications beyond mere appearance.

Turning again to the dictionary for this ‘unpacking’, we read:

knob

Use Knob in a sentence

knob

[nob] Show IPA

noun

a projecting part, usually rounded, forming the handle of a door, drawer, or the like.

a rounded lump or protuberance on the surface or at the end of something, as a knot on a tree trunk.

Architecture . an ornamental boss, as of carved work.

a rounded hill, mountain, or elevation on a ridge.

verb (used with object), knobbed, knob·bing.

to produce a knob on.

to furnish with a knob.

(in stone cutting) to knock off (excess stone) preparatory to dressing; knobble; skiffle.

Relevant Questions

Who Invented The Door Knob?

What Is A Knob?

How To Paint Door Knobs

How To Remove The Inner Knob On A Door

How To Install A Door Knob

How To Choose A Knob Size For Cabinets

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English knobbe < Middle Low German

Related forms

knob·like, adjective

Can be confused: knob, nob.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2014.
Cite This Source

Link To knob

Collins

World English Dictionary

knob (nɒb)

— n
1.	a rounded projection from a surface, such as a lump on a tree trunk
2.	a handle of a door, drawer, etc, esp one that is rounded
3.	a round hill or knoll or morainic ridge
4.	taboo ( Brit ) a slang word for penis
5.	informal ( Brit ) and the same to you with knobs on , and the same to you with brass knobs on the same to you but even more so

— vb , knobs , knobbing , knobbed
6.	( tr ) to supply or ornament with knobs
7.	( intr ) to form into a knob; bulge
8.	taboo ( Brit ) to have sexual intercourse with (someone)

[C14: from Middle Low German knobbe knot in wood; see knop ]

'knobby

— *adj*

'knoblike

— *adj*

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

knob

1373, knobe, probably from a Scand. or Ger. source (cf. M.L.G. knobbe "knob," O.N. knyfill "short horn").Meaning "knoll, isolated round hill" is first recorded 1650, especially in U.S.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

American Heritage

Science Dictionary

knob (nŏb) Pronunciation Key
A prominent, rounded hill or mountain.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

Simply, a knob is a rounded protrusion; but the dictionary is useful in answering our question about the difference between a handle and a knob: a knob is ‘a handle of a door or drawer . . that is rounded.’

Ah, so a knob is just a rounded handle: it is a category of ‘handle’ - a type of handle. What other types might there be? ‘Grip’ is another word that might come under the broad spectrum of ‘handle’, as might ‘pull,’ ‘lever,’ ‘control’ and ‘switch.’ Think of a camera ‘grip’: a handle with specific form and texture to ensure the easy and certain handling of the equipment. Considering a ‘switch’ as a small handle that allows the on/off control does appear to take the idea to its limits, as switches are more operations for the ‘finger’ part of the hand rather than the ‘hand’ itself, although switches do allow for the total control of a situation.

So we get back to ‘handle.’ Generically it seems to be something for the hand to manage, to allow the intricate manipulation of some other item, article or idea. Handlebars on a bike tell the story. These are bars for the hands to control the vehicle. Door handles do likewise. They are critical to the safe, easy and comfortable operation of the swinging leaf, as the handlebars are on the operation of a bike.

When considered as a design item, it is the hand that is the primary reference for any handle form: the physical termination of the arms: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/what-is-design.html The basic question is: what will the hand have to do in order to achieve the required outcome? How should form be shaped in order to allow this to occur? To understand the problem and its solution, one has to ask: How big is the hand? What is the physical operation of the hand? What are its characteristics and limits? What might accommodate its comfort? Hands are, after all, physical items - bones, tendons and skin. They move towards the item selected, to that part of it best shaped for the hand, in order to achieve a specific outcome. This might be lifting; it might be gripping; it could be twisting: maybe a bit of everything? There is a complicated sensing prior to any touching, after which matters gather greater complexity. Feel and fit are engaged in the one operation: the achievement of the purpose. So it is that the concept of ‘fitness for purpose’ has an immediate relevance, with the measure being rooted in the feeling and success of the outcome.

One might ask: with the exampled drawer, what form might a handle best take? This thought arises from the experience of using various kitchen drawers and cupboard handles. There are the ‘D’ handle forms that provide a projecting link in various shapes and sizes. There are the knobs; there are the recessed handles that have been routed into the face of the drawer as in Danish teak detailing; there is also the under-drawer recess bars in this field too, that offer a recess grip for the fingers to engage and pull. There are recessed grips that are surface-mounted too - pulls. ‘Pull’ is another ‘handle’ term: think of drawer pulls. These might be small handles or, indeed knobs, or other protrusions, D or otherwise, or recesses that allow the grip of the tug that is needed to establish motion, the withdrawal of the drawer from its boxed enclosure.

In all of these operations, the fingers play the critical part. So considering a ‘switch’ to be a handle may not be so extreme a concept. Indeed, what is a hand without fingers - a fist? Language intrigues with its intermeshing links and references. It is a little like computer programmes that offer numerous ways in which to achieve the same outcome. Can a fingerless hand open a drawer? There are the drawers that require a push before they open when one can then pull them out. These have no handles, but still require the hand to establish movement. A fist could achieve this outcome. This circumstance is a little like the difference between the key on the computer keyboard and the touch screen. There is a phantom handle or key involved: the hand, well, the finger, plays the same role but has a specifically designed object for the finger to engage with only in other circumstances.

So what might be the best form for a drawer handle, or are handles all ‘equal to the job’ as the colloquial saying goes? One has to go back to the qualities of the hand to consider this question. When the arms hanging loosely by the body, the hands dangle beside it, either parallel to the torso or at right angles to it. The alternatives are sometimes humourously noted as being the difference between man and monkey: man has his hands in the same plane as the arc of the swing of the arms, while the monkey has its hands in a knuckle-dragging location, like those of a swimmer moving in water, but inactively flagging. Still, it really makes little difference because when called into play, the wrist can manipulate the hand into various positions of rotation to suit the intent; this is its connective, universal motion. Consider raising the hand to the top drawer under a bench. The handle type will determine the required rotation. Recessed handles means the fingers must point up, or perhaps down, depending of the direction of the concealed lip; D handles offer an optional up or down grip depending on one’s habit, location or orientation; a knob means fingers must point forward ready to grasp and tug - or grip. ‘Grip’ is something that recessed handles never allow. These ask for a more delicate, precise fingertip relationship with the hand/body.

But which is the best approach? Maybe it is personal functional preference; or perhaps the choice has to do with one’s aesthetic predilection, selecting the appearance that one desires before the grip. There are various subtle differences involved. The D handle offers an invitation for the hand to manipulate the drawer without touching the fabric of the drawer, in the same way in which the handle of a suitcase allows its separate manipulation; whereas recessed handles make the hand guess at the concealed grip and make the hand touch what is a part of the shadowy fabric of the drawer, or to get very close to it. There is an intimacy here - one is asked to reach into unknown, unseen recesses. The knob is far more explicit. In this way it is like the D handle, but while the D handle frequently, but not always, allows the fingers to slide comfortably into a defined gap and to operate in concert with the easy effort of pulling the untouched withdrawing in free and open space, the recessed handles make one consider the fit of the fingers into the hidden space for pulling, and then to sense the unseen fit for fingers. Both of these finger pull operations are sought to be overcome by the push-the-drawer ‘automatic’ opening that means that the drawer itself has to be touched, anywhere. There is no definition of the location for this gesture that has a blindness even less certain than the recessed handle. The major differences in handle choices are highlighted when one has, say, sticky or wet fingers.

Drawers can allow for a flexibility in handle choices, by design as it were - one’s choice/preference - but mugs are another thing. Here handles perform the important role of allowing hot objects to be handled, lifted safely. Separation is critical, so the D form is the best. One sees L-shaped handle forms like little cantilevers, but rarely knobs on mugs. Knobs are specifically useful for pulling, not lifting. Sometimes, like drawers, mugs have no handles. Here other methods are used for separation, like the mug wrapped in a serviette; or, more recently, the double-walled mug that insulates itself. With these options, the shape of the mug becomes important, as it becomes, as it were, an integrated handle/mug form.

Materials play an important role here. On drawers, one has any choice of material for a D handle, but options are quickly reduced with recessed handles, depending of course, on the fashion of the day that will determine availability. Danish designers used teak for everything. Later, plastics became available for face and bottom recessed grips, and metal for lower recessed handle slots. Durability is the core here. On mugs, insulation is critical; more so on pots and pans where temperatures are much increased, and may have to survive oven temperatures: dishwashers too. Microwave usage is another complexity for designers to consider. Durability is important. The choices for our drawer example all need to consider their resilience. Danish teak develops a patina around the grip in a way that most D pulls (!) don’t.

Pots and pans are interesting. Lids often have knobs, while the pan itself has a handle grip projection to keep the hand away from the source of heat and to allow safe management of the pot when filled. With both lids and pots, extra insulation is frequently needed with the use of a kitchen cloth. This makes matters safer with respect to heat, but more awkward with considered manipulations that require some precision of control.

This is the world of the designer who has to ask: what should a handle be? A designer needs to ask what anything/everything needs to be: c.f. Louis Kahn: ‘What does a house want to be?’

Cameras are interesting because the handle has become a part of the shaping of the whole object, like some mugs. Here separation is managed by textured grip surfaces applied to the main body where hands and face might touch. Bodies swell to allow for the mass to be gripped. Handles allow grip and pull; indeed, on a door, twist and turn too: it is their base nature.

Door handle design is much varied but is basically of two types - knobs and levers. These are doors with latches and locks. Doors otherwise use D handle forms for manipulation: pulls and pushes. For handle design it comes back to the hand. We know about the fit between the hand and the handle. Just recall the awkward torsion on the fingers with pretty twee grips on a china tea cup, and compare this to the easy balance and comfort of a handle designed for the ordinary hand, without the raised little finger.

Handles that form a part of the whole are interesting. Old Roman objects sometimes have fully integrated handles that are goosenecks or the like, in functional objects that resemble animals and birds. Such is their delight, like lizard D handles.

Objects today that are frequently handled, like mobile phones, have no handles. Like cameras, they are considered, if at all, as an object in a hand, with allowances made for finger manipulation – sometimes; sometimes not: one soon discovers awkwardness with the resulting RSI - repetitive strain injury. Good design overcomes such tensions and stresses; it accommodates these in its shaping and alignments.

So what is a handle? It is an object or a part of an object that is meant to be touched by the hand, to allow itself to be readily manipulated. Handles make an offering; they welcome touch; and having encouraged the meeting between body and object, they then need to fulfil their promise and make a fit between fingers, thumb and palm and the forces, stresses and thermal differences involved to ensure that the object can become an extension of the body. In summary, the handle extends mans’ possibilities. It is a critical thing in the matters of this world that allow us to participate in it in the way we do. A poorly designed handle limits all possibilities; indeed, hinders them not only with intolerable and unsafe stresses, but also with blisters, burns, cuts and abrasions.

Handles literally allow us to get a handle on the world in which we live. They allow us to share in its concepts and ideas - by design. The fundamental design object is the handle. Once we understand what a handle is and what it must be, and what it might be, we can then understand what it is that design is: the mediation between body and function: fitness for purpose - fitness and purpose. Sullivan called it ‘form follows function; function follows form.’ In the larger scale of spaces and places, design still involves the body that has to move through and into these spheres of living and participate in an ever more intimate involvement with objects and things on a finer and finer scale of connection and association, developing an ever more complex relationship between body, mind, feelings and senses all operating in concert - but this is no theatre for entertainment. The richness grows once one remembers that bodies have minds and feelings too. Design is never merely the manipulation of appearances, be these interesting or uniquely different. This remains only the manipulation of appearances for appearances sake, their unique differences, that involve egos too, that all seek style and an enhancement of reputation though blatant advertising: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/tensegrity-bridge.html This is not design. We need to get a handle on matters so that the world can be enhanced rather than land-marked with special pieces created by pseudo geniuses.

If we think of design as the making of handles, then we might have a tangible guide to measure outcomes against, rather than merely assess the drama and difference. Consider, say, the use of an automobile: I walk up to it, reach for the door handle and open it. I pull the door open and slide in, sometimes using the overhead handle to assist. I adjust the seat by lifting the seat-adjust handle; I hold the steering wheel which is like the car's handle bars; I put the break on and put the clutch in - ‘foot’ handles; I change gears with the knob manipulation; I put on the air conditioning - knob; I adjust the air flow - lever handle; I switch the radio on - knob; I open the cover to the compartment - concealed handle; etc. etc. A car is an array of handles. In one way, everything is a handle, an array of handles. We participate in the world with our hands, our feet, our bodies. Consider the drinking glass: it is designed without a handles; it is the handle itself, as I pick it up. Likewise nearly everything we engage with - buttons; knobs; levels; pulls; handles; or integral shapes - these are ‘handles,’ places for the body to engage form and function. Architecture creates places for the body to engage, to feel, to experience: c.f. Rassmussen’s Experiencing Architecture. Design ‘handles’, and one designs for man. It is a principle that is easily extrapolated into say a chair - design for the body: there should be a place for the hands too. On the larger and more complex scale, all buildings are designed likewise, for the body and the finer interactions between body, space, place and detail - the feeling, thinking, sensing, moving body. Is anything designed that can ignore this? Is it that, if these matters are ignored, like the fallen tree in the forest that has not been seen or heard, it is not architecture, or building? Space and place and object need to be known and be experienced to truly be. Even style has its roots here, but it is the intimate coherence of the experience and its sensory outcome that enriches life and being as design, rather than just being clever, distracting, bespoke entertainment. One could say that design is the accommodation of touch: the making of handles.

28 January 2015
An interesting report from The Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/humans-have-been-handy-for-longer-than-previously-thought-study-20150122-12vyhi.html

Humans have been handy for longer than previously thought, says study

Date

January 23, 2015

7 reading now

Nicky Phillips

Science Editor

Precision grip: a modern human grasps a bone from an Australopithecus africanus' thumb. Photo: T.L. Kivell/M. Skinner

Humans have had the upper hand for longer than they realised.

New research has found the distinctly human ability to make a powerful grip and perform delicate and precise movements with the hand evolved 500,000 years earlier than previously thought.

These unique traits, setting us apart from our ape cousins, are thought to have developed around the time early humans climbed down from the trees and began using tools.

But the timing of this transition has been debated for decades.

Archaeologists studying the internal bone structure of the hands of an early African ancestor, previously not considered a toolmaker, have concluded the species, Australopithecus africanus, was likely a primitive handyman.

While several members of the Australopiths display human-like hand features, such as opposable thumbs, stone tools don't appear in the fossil record until about 2.6 million years ago.

This absence suggested the group, who lived about 500,000 years earlier, lacked the precision to hold objects and use them as tools.

Since the 1950s the younger Homo habilis was thought to be the first early human toolmaker.

Casting doubt on this long-standing assumption is the work of British archaeologist Matthew Skinner and his team, who examined the pattern of trabeculae – tiny tissue elements that act as beams, struts, or rods – in some of Australopithecus africanus hand bones.

These internal structures can infer whether the hand's owner was still climbing trees, or if their thumbs and fingers had evolved a more forceful opposition to take on more modern human-like behaviours such as gripping tools.

Their analysis, published in the journal Science, contends that a number of hominins had precision grips.

"We can now confidently assert that some Australopiths, like Australopithecus africanus, did indeed use stone tools as reflected in the way the internal structure of the bones of the hand is arranged," said archaeologist Darren Curnoe, who was not involved in the study.

Dr Curnoe, from the University of NSW, said this discovery would change how archaeologists viewed early African ancestors.

"They had a sophisticated material culture, which they must have relied upon to eek out a living on the challenging African savanna," he said.

"We can probably now think of sophisticated stone tool making and use as characteristic of most, if not all, members of our evolutionary group; as sorting us from all other apes well before the big human brain began to enlarge in our evolution; implying brain evolution was probably decoupled from the evolution of tools and at least material culture."

23 August 2015

For more on the hand see Richard Sennett The Craftsman Penguin Books London 2009 - p.151: Chapter 5 - THE HAND.
p.178:
This chapter has pursued in detail the idea of the unity of head and hand. . . .
Concentration consummates a certain line of technical development in the hand.

It is interesting to note the strategy of the traditional craftsman: Having concentrated he set to work.

8 MARCH 2021

SEE: https://g.co/doodle/rfeh6t8

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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.

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

WHAT IS A HANDLE?

handle

han·dle

handle definition

handle definition

knob

knob

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