voussoirs: WATERBOARDING PLACE WITH HIGHWAYMAN PLANNING

Saturday, 10 May 2014

WATERBOARDING PLACE WITH HIGHWAYMAN PLANNING

BRISBANE CULTURAL PRECINCT TO BE RADICALLY REDESIGNED UNDER NEW MASTER PLAN

This was the headline that surprised the eye. What! Gibbo has just died and already the vultures are moving in to clean up the profits by reworking his much-loved and awarded work, literally behind his back. It seems that someone did not have the courage to promote such a vision during his lifetime. It looks like an opportunist’s cowardice. Part of his Queensland Cultural Centre had already been given a work over by the practice involved in the proposed redesign, and other firms too. Now it seemed that everything was open for anything to occur. Airspace was going to be sold. The report simply said that it ‘will’ be - no doubts at all. The whole place would be given an upgrade, added life, 'energised' as the jargon spin says, suggesting that the precinct, like Gibbo, is now dead - past its useful life purpose; or is it just about style and fashionable imagery? - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/on-death-of-robin-gibson-architect.html

Can linear places be public squares, or do they remain thoroughfares?

What might Robin Gibson have thought of this proposal that seemed to have at its heart the desire to make money by selling off rights to develop a high rise hotel and an equally high block of apartments in the cultural precinct. Indeed, the Premier of the State boldly noted, ‘open and upfront’ as he said - as if this rude, brazen positioning was the same as ‘open’ government, not selling off the jewels or defacing a significant building complex - that this exercise was a blatant grab for profits, to make money for the coffers that, like every government of opposite persuasion always says, were ‘in a much worse state than anticipated.’ It is this shameless admission that the whole concept is about making money that allows the architectural jargon to look like simple fabrications, invented to mislead, to divert attention away from what appears to be obvious: that this is a pure grab for cash where anything will be allowed if one can pay for it or will pay for it. It does not appear to be a development that has the good of Brisbane or its future at its heart. It seems to hold no vision other than those in its own interests. It reeks of some of the reports now coming from ICAC, the New South Wales corruption commission, where money is sought for a variety of causes, fabricated excuses, any reason - but it is always for money alone; just for money. The motivation is singular; the purpose insignificant: the only outcome considered relevant is to gain money. This is no way to plan.

Given that the claim about defeated governments leaving messy finances always arises, yes always, meaning that promises have to be broken for the good of the country and all of the voters - remember the classic ‘non-core ‘ promise of Little Johnny, Primer Minister Howard ? - why is no party bright enough, honest enough, or responsible enough to allow for such contingencies, to accommodate such circumstances when promoting itself and promising outcomes for government? It all looks like a game that allows the most outrageous guarantees to be made in the grab for power, and then, when they have to be broken, to keep blaming others as long as might be possible in order to allow anything to occur. It has almost become a cliché circumstance. Yes, governments are experts at creating ways in which anything might happen all for the good of everyone in a ‘win-win’ spin situation, in spite of anything that might have been assured.

So the spin is that money has to be made from nothing but air; that the government ‘goodies,’ anything, anywhere, have to be sold for fast cash to improve the books that have been left in such a drastic and critical shape. Things are promoted as being urgent and necessary until there is some other desire to spend - then money flows willy-nilly. It seems that someone came up with the idea to create a new master plan for the cultural precinct of Brisbane’s south bank area and beyond, and was able to flog the idea of selling airspace to the government and developers: literally money for nothing! The report in The Courier Mail said that Cox Rayner, the firm that designed the Kurilpa Bridge, has prepared the ‘20 year plan.’ - see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/on-bridges.html

This was the firm that falsely promoted the pedestrian bridge across the Brisbane River as a ‘tensegrity strucutre’ without qualification when it was really a cable stay structure that only in a very small, incidental, almost decorative part, involved tensegrity principles. This fact was finally admitted in a corrected Wikipedia article posted under the name of the engineers, Arup. The Cox Rayner site had been closed down by Wikipedia because it apparently breached the site’s conditions, possibly by using it for commercial promotional purposes: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/tensegrity-bridge.html

What energises spaces?

Now this architectural firm wants to change the Gibson development in what appears to be a blatant grab for a job. Where is the need? The firm has already been involved in the Master Plan for the GOMA extension of the site. For this precinct it created a forecourt of vehicular driveways and bus stops that services the car parking entrances and drop off areas. One wonders why such a great riverfront opportunity had been so misused for mundane traffic purposes that create a barrier for pedestrian approaches, when there were other subtler and more sensitive possibilities that could have created places for people that connected with the river. The public space that is left over reads like an incidental, narrow linear link between the art gallery and GOMA running in front of the cheekily redecorated library that seems to be the model for the redesign of all of Robin Gibson’s work: smother it with ad hoc interesting pieces and a story.

Planned with a different vision, these places could have become a public square spreading out from the Merivale Street axis at the strangely-named Go Between bridge – don’t all bridges go between? - and connecting directly with the CBD via other bridge connections that had some rational beginning and ending, places that made sense to join together, as argued in On Bridges - see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/on-bridges.html - a natural, cohesive connection touching necessity and purpose within the structure of the city, enriching it, celebrating it, rather than seeking a dramatic ‘world’s first’ and missing poorly with deceptive promotions. Now this architectural firm wants to change the cultural centre precinct, put life back into it when it had the chance to do this years ago, both in the master plan and with the bridge. One has to be sceptical, especially with the Premier’s admission still ringing in the ears: money, money, money!

The illustration uses the typical half-light, day-night technique of architectural photographs to highlight the interior
and shades the tower mass into the darker cloud off to one side, almost as an incidental 'aside'

A glimpse at the images on line in The Courier Mail site shows the usual architectural graphic tricks. Here we see glass and reflective bamboozlings layering Gibson’s forms with grey-blue ghosts of towers looming softly in the sky in gentle, sweetly innocent monochromatic puffs. Towers do not do this unless in cloud or mist, an occasion in Brisbane that is rather rare. This is an architectural misrepresentation - yet again, another one of the many seen in this profession? - see http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html Towers are solid; hard: they have a presence and footprint; they do not float; they create and cast shade. They can reflect, like the glassy layers that find it useful to be delineated in this manner apparently to multiply confusion in order to add ‘interest’ to the vision, complexity for the eye to be dazzled; for the perception to be fuzzy and intriguing, suggesting ‘new life,’ whatever this is. Why argue for added life, suggesting that there is none, or little there now, when there was the chance to do just this, to at least start it, with an earlier master plan? Surely these are not just sugary words and nebulous images to soften up minds for the advantage of developers? Or are they? What is really wrong with the place as it now exists, an aggregation of award winning buildings designed by an architect who was a Gold Medallist in his profession? Could this firm improve on Ronchamp? La Tourette? Wright’s work? Why not? What are the moral rights obligations here? Is this merely the same old argument that any other architect could do better?

The scheme reminds one of Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for the centre of Paris, 1925 - proposed nearly 90 years ago!

There is a question lingering here: why does it seem impossible for one architect to respect another architect’s work? Why is it that one architect always believes that a superior job can always be done - by him or her? There is a sickness in the profession that is promoted by the self-centred idea that architects are gods - that ‘my’ expression is always supreme: IRON architects. More modesty is required; more piety; more tolerance; greater humility.

But does not an architect have a moral right for his work to be respected? On moral rights and more personally, I have had an important portion, the entrance and its parts, of one of my projects, the Kangaroo Point Cliffs Boardwalk, demolished by this firm - ironically with its Goodwill Bridge - without any contact being made, nothing at all by anyone; and another project, Block E at the South Bank TAFE, significantly modified after I had been contacted by a third party - apparently the firm did not want to talk to me directly about it: mmmmm. After I had said that I would refuse the proposal, I was told smugly, carelessly, that it was going to happen in spite of my objections. The box on the required consultation had been ticked: so much for moral rights in Queensland. Given these outcomes with this same firm of architects, one has to be concerned about the respect that might be shown for Gibbo’s work. As an aside, it is interesting to read that Roger Scruton sees beauty as a moral matter; but this is Queensland where beauty and morals seem to play second fiddle to money and other’s whims.

Well, what would Robin Gibson have thought of this scheme? Sadly, he is no longer here to tell us, but he would have been very articulate about it. What we know of his thoughts can assist us. He always spoke of his cultural centre in the context of the distant hills of Mount Coot-tha. Its role was to block out the rude silhouetted industrial profiles poking up from West End when viewed from the city, to allow everyone to lift up their eyes unto the hills, to enjoy them without the intervention of the crude, ad hoc functional structures. Gibbo loved these hills that formed the western horizon of the cityscape, just as he cherished the Kangaroo Pint cliffs that closed the eastern vistas. One might assume that this is the reason that he kept his development low, horizontal: to allow his carefully detailed, off-white concrete masses to be framed by this iconic, rolling backdrop to the city. He recognised that Brisbane held a unique quality with its special relationship to these natural features.

Ghosts of the future float as rectangular clouds in the graded wash of the sky over the river steps

On a more detailed and specific, personal note, one can see that, in one illustration in The Courier Mail, the forecourt and riverside zones have been reshaped with numerous steps leading down to the river walk built years after the gallery’s completion. I worked with Robin on this part of the project in the early days when something was needed for the Queen to open - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/on-death-of-robin-gibson-architect.html In some early sketches, I had prepared some schemes just like this one, but Rob rejected them all. He finally developed the idea of green areas getting higher and denser as they approached the bridge, with a clever diagonal ramp running across the slope - a very subtle idea that made this place distinctive. Robin did not want steps, just grassy slopes and riverside green in front of his building. Yet the ‘redesigned’ plan has concrete steps in excess, complete with hoods. Are these for shade? The Kurilpa Bridge is not the only bridge this firm has designed. There is the Goodwill Bridge too. Both have shades that, at times, struggle to achieve what seems to be their purpose. What might happen here, as style seems to be more important than function in the existing examples.

Has the Gold Coast City Council cultural centre competition inspired this firm to create a diagrammatic grid to cover the surrounds? - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/gold-coast-guggenheim-gangnam-wow.html There is this suggestion in the patterning of the proposed shelters that ARM considers to be its great discovery that allowed everything to fall into place in its Gold Coast scheme that, interestingly, also has its commercial driving force. Important blocks lining Bundall Road are to be subdivided off and sold for apartment block developments. The income from these sales will apparently fund the new scheme - ‘win-win’ spin again, all for the good of the people! Dare one object?

Oh, what to do? What is one expected to say? The issues are so mixed, convoluted and complex that they seem impure - insincere. There does not appear to be sufficient evidence to make any upgrade necessary apart from some revenge of style. The timing is just too sad; too blatant; too structured; the Premier’s words too bold. The ambitions likewise seem to be unbelievable, to involve greed and self-interest rather than any improvement of public place in Brisbane, for Brisbane. This is, as the Premier has declared it, simply a money grab.

One needs a better argument for change than this, because it is very likely to be only a scheme for the good of the developer rather than anything else. Consider Barangaroo in Sydney. The report today, (07 May 2014), in the media pointed out that this project has doubled in size since it was first briefed in 2005 - for the good of? What might happen at the cultural centre? What history might be defaced? How much more airspace might be sold of? Where else might one get money for air? How big might this apparent grab become?

Barangaroo building plans double in size

Sydney Morning Herald ‎- 1 day ago

Unpublished plans for the Barangaroo site show planned buildings have more than doubled in size since the original design brief was issued, .

Brisbane needs better than this - better planning; more concern; more consideration; more real and substantial beauty that is looked after, cared for, rather than being modified just to suit a few. The other matter of interest here noted by Roger Scruton is that cities started to fail once architects took on urban planning, creating single visions for large regions rather than letting areas grow as an accumulation of places shaped to accommodate neighbours, not built as smart districts for the display of sole genius: 'MY' importance: see RogerScruton Green Philospohy How To Think Seriously Sbout The Panet, Atlantic Books, London, 2013. This precinct seems to be being shaped just for money, by money, rather than having anything to do with people, place or planet.

Robin Gibson's complex becomes almost incidental, cropped off to one side in favour of the new and bold

We need to rediscover how to make cities of true quality, not bleat out jargon phrases and commercial blurb in order to convince a few to allow a few to do anything just for the benefit of the few. This has nothing to do with Spitfire pilots either. There is no glory here for anyone, just profits.

But everything is now open for public comment. This is a strange strategy often used by the Premier in order to get his way. Who really knows what the ‘result’ might be? Who checks? Is this just the cliché call of politicians to ‘trust us’? Anyone can say and claim anything in this loose guise of a game? There are no rules; there is no scrutiny; no strategy other than to prove one point that will be proved. What is the methodology other than diversionary spin? My personal experience with this scheming was with parking in our street. To overcome my clear and calculated objections, proven mathematically, the premier, then Lord Mayor of Brisbane, contacted neighbours via an informal poll to ask all nearby residents their opinion of my proposal. The response was that I lost: go away; we will no longer respond to any of your correspondence. Can this outcome be verified? No. Is it sensible? No.

The blunt, somewhat 'smart-arse' hand-scribbled note on the bottom of the letter read: ‘Its not about equity; its about democracy!’ - signed Campbell Newman. Puzzlingly Newman’s view of democracy has nothing to do with equity: (see 20 June 2014 note below). It is a bit like PM Abbott’s understanding of democracy. He has recently said that democracy has nothing to do with what people want; it has to do with what people need. This is 7^th May 2014. The budget is due next Tuesday. No doubt we will be told what we need, in the same manner as Newman will tell us likewise for our cultural centre that ‘will’ have its airspace developed. One has to remember Newman’s credentials. He promoted the development of the tunnels in Brisbane that are reportedly seriously struggling to survive financially; but Newman holds no shame about this. Oddly, almost unbelievably, the illustrations in The Courier Mail include a final video of, yes, yet another tunnel proposal - a two-level tunnel for trains and buses. Will he never learn? It seems not, because only politicians know what the people need in an inequitable democracy.

The video entertains the eye with vehicles moving just as in child's play

It all appears to be a recipe for a problematical outcome for the city, again. Yet wasn’t it Newman who promoted the city as ‘the most liveable’? Jargon needs to be challenged; spin queried. Real experience needs to become not only our guide and measure, how we might improve and enrich it, but also our ambition, how to care for neighbours, place and context. Vague notions of opportunities for profit alone should be sidelined so that real impacts can be assessed rather than having our city sold off to developers for profit. We need to listen to what the city is saying, to what it wants to be. Forcing outcomes on any place is like waterboarding it in order to achieve a defined conclusion, as declared in the IT WILL HAPPEN, in spite of everything and anything.

The Gold Coast Bulletin carried a small article with the headline:

BOLDS PLANS UNVEILLED FOR CULTURAL SITE MAKEOVER on 6 May 2014:

Airspace over the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the Queensland Museum will be sold off by the State Government to fund a facelift for the cultural precinct.

Bold plans for the redesign unveiled at the State Library yesterday include two new towers, a 1500-seat theatre and more covered walkways.

Premier Campbell Newman said his government was being “quite open and upfront” about the commercial opportunities included in the upgrade.

Note: ‘will’ - it will happen in spite of anything; ‘bold’ - the scheme is controversial; and the ‘open and upfront’ position, as if this made the concept and its process democratic and fair in spite of everything appearing otherwise. One is able to be ‘open and upfront’ with the most hideous of propositions, but it does not change their sense or morality. Spin needs to be deconstructed so that cunning politicians and architects who want to tell us what they need, do not hoodwink us. This is not city planning. It is the highwayman’s approach to planning: lurk in the dark and take advantage of all opportunities in order to maximize profit in spite of anyone’s existence and any neighbour’s needs: but who is my neighbour? This is the classic legal question that has been beautifully answered by Lord Atkin:

Lord Atkin observed: “The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbour . . . Who then in law is my neighbour?”

The answer seems to be – persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in my contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.

http://www.nzdrc.co.nz/site/commercialdisputes/files/ReSolution/ReSolution%20Issue%203//WHO%20THEN%20IN%20LAW%20IS%20MY%20NEIGHBOUR.pdf

One always needs to consider neighbours in any design or redesign: the original architect, the nearby residents, and the passersby. We need to listen carefully and quietly to what the city and its inhabitants are saying, not to what the developers might want or what the politicians demand.

see also: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/civic-details-importance-of-little.html

THE ARTICLE

QLD News

Brisbane cultural centre precinct to be radically redesigned under new master plan

ROBYN IRONSIDE, PHIL BROWN

THE COURIER-MAIL

MAY 05, 2014 4:30PM

SOUTH Bank’s skyline will be transformed by an ambitious redesign of the cultural precinct that will add a new five-star hotel and residential tower to the area.

Open spaces will be “energised” with new seating and covered walkways, outdoor theatres and dining facilities.

The firm that designed the Kurilpa Bridge, Cox Rayner, came up with the “20-year vision” which will now be made available for public comment.

What South Bank precinct needs

Unveiling the plans today, Premier Campbell Newman said the sale of airspace over the Queensland Performing Arts Complex and the Queensland Museum would help fund the work.

“The master plan is a bold vision to guide future development and investment over the next 20 years, proposing new theatres, hotels, dining and science facilities as well as a new learning centre,” Mr Newman said.

“We want to make what’s great about Queensland even better and the economic advantages of a booming cultural precinct will be felt by all Queenslanders.”

The plan aims to increase visitor numbers to the precinct from five million a year to 7.5 million and boost revenue by 120 per cent.

Arts Minister Ian Walker said there was unprecedented public demand in Queensland for performing arts, with people turning out in droves to purchase tickets for Disney’s The Lion King at QPAC, and the recent sellout art show Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth.

“We want to keep attracting these magnificent shows while preserving what makes Southbank so unique and attractive,” Mr Walker said.

As part of the push to make Southbank more of an “extension of the city” the plan proposes covering pedestrian walkways on the Victoria Bridge.

Mr Newman said that had been looked at before, and it was found to be almost impossible to do.

“Let’s have another go at that, there is advice from some of these experts here who say they can come up with some ways to do it.

“I do remember that a former deputy to myself (as Lord Mayor) David Hinchliffe suggested an umbrella stand at either end of the bridge. That was a joke.”

The period for public comment will run for up to two months, and Mr Newman said he would expect the initial steps to delivering the plan be taken in the 2015-16 financial year.

http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-cultural-centre-precinct-to-be-radically-redesigned-under-new-master-plan/story-fnihsrf2-1226906273317

On 'the plan aims to increase visitor numbers,' see: http://springbrooklocale.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/who-or-what-is-tourist.html

brisbanetimes.com.au also reported on the redesign:

Cultural precinct to get new theatre, hotel under proposed master plan

Natalie Bochenski May 05, 2014

An artist's impression of the proposed changes to the cultural precinct. Photo: Supplied

Queenslanders have one month to tell the government what they think of a sweeping new master plan for Brisbane’s cultural precinct.

Premier Campbell Newman said he had “no shadow of a doubt” that the 20-year plan would make South Bank and South Brisbane Australia’s leading arts and culture hub.

“I think this vision will be very powerful for Brisbane going forward,” he said.

“Nowhere in Australia has so rich an offering, such a range of different venues and experiences in such a vibrant piece of public space.”

The plan, drawn up by Cox Rayner architects and consultants Urbis, is designed to make the precinct easier to navigate, and to better connect existing cultural assets.

It features:

Expansions to the Queensland Museum, plus a dedicated science centre

A new 5-star hotel and/or office space to be built over the Queensland Performing Arts Complex, which will also see a new 1500-seat theatre built, plus an all-seasons outdoor venue

More public access to the river from the State Library, including an amphitheatre, remodelled Edge facility and CityCat terminal

A new grand staircase to the Queensland Art Gallery forecourt, plus expanded frontage, a new gallery and a canopied link to GoMA

A remodelled Cultural Forecourt, to include space for 10,000 people during large public events, and waterfront seating with a canopy

A new pedestrian bridge over Melbourne Street

Covered footpaths on the Victoria Bridge

A future major cultural facility on the current Parmalat factory site at Kurilpa (subject to plans for the business to move)

http://m.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cultural-precinct-to-get-new-theatre-hotel-under-proposed-master-plan-20140505-zr4z1.html

Note: "no shadow of a doubt" . . . "very powerful for Brisbane going forward" . . . "nowhere in Australia" . . . "a vibrant piece of public space" - all these comments are based on a few scant, smudgy sketches. It looks like pure spin; vague, hyped hopes being used as a sales pitch to sell apparent certainty: that 'it' - whatever - will happen: "so rich an offering"? Humbug? It appears so since, as Lord Mayor of the City of Brisbane, Campbell Neuman was always complaining about the State's control of the Southbank Parklands area, arguing that this important part of Brisbane should be controlled by the Brisbane City Council planners. Now we see Neuman, as Premier of the State of Queensland, promoting a special master plan for the cultural precinct on the south bank without any apparent involvement of the Brisbane City Council. Such are the games of power.

A city needs a rich vision as a whole, a plan defined in a clear and precise, unambiguous enforceable document that is indeed implemented, not negotiated away to the highest bidder or bamboozled by the cleverest spin. Plucking out different areas of a city and formulating special plans for these precincts out of the context of the whole is a random and opportunistic method for any city to develop. But the redesign of Robin Gibson's Brisbane award-winning cultural precinct is, after all, only Neuman's grab for money, isn't it?

20 June 2014
Do all right wing governments hold a vision of democracy without equality?

Joe Hockey says 'we can't promise equality' as he dismisses budget critics

http://gu.com/p/3q2bj

NOTE:
It seems that, with Premier Newman, if it is not tunnels, it's towers: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/queenslands-power-tower.html

No comments:

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.

Saturday, 10 May 2014

WATERBOARDING PLACE WITH HIGHWAYMAN PLANNING

No comments:

Post a Comment