voussoirs: THE DESIRE FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

THE DESIRE FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL – DUNDEE BY DESIGN

Dundee

On BBC Radio Scotland, 9 April 2015, 6:15am, a commentator from Dundee reported that the city wanted "a building that will say to them Dundee is an exceptional city". One assumes that 'them' is referring to folk in the rest of the world rather than the residents of Dundee, who probably know better than to believe in hype, be this verbal or visual. Such is everyday experience and the refreshing cynicism of the Scots.

Exceptional city?

The hidden statement in this report is that Dundee apparently wants to be transformed, to be a place 'on the map' like Bilbao has become, changed, with an 'exceptional' Gehry-styled building as its centrepiece. The Guggenheim at Bilbao was indeed mentioned by the reporter as an aside, as an example of the Dundee idea. Is a Guggenheim to be built at Dundee too? - if only! Dundee already has a Frank O. Gehry, the Maggie's Centre, built 2003: see - http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/maggiescentre/ Maybe it is too modest? It is, as one has come to expect, a quirky piece that, unusually, appears to be the precurser, the inspiration for Hadid's Glasgow Riverside Museum, Scotland's Muesum of Transport and Travel: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/bell-and-fish-two-glasgow-museums-part_04.html and http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/pedestrian-approach.html Why has this never been mentioned? - has it? Does the world like to recognise only 'original' genius? - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/pairs-16-gehry-inspires-hadid.html

Maggie's Centre

The search, it seems, is always for the exceptional when the real need is for the ordinary to be enriched. The exceptional is singular, itemised; the ordinary is everywhere, as a cloud. It is the everyday that needs attention, now, because it has become so blandly nothing, lost in its lack of any ideals and identification beyond personal whims and bad planning rules. It is something that is with us everywhere, always, everyday – hence its importance. The exceptional seeks to tell us what we wish the everyday might be, or become, when it never can or will: see ON BRANDING in the sidebar. It is really too easy to be extraordinary. Performance artists show us how simplistic and naive such distractions can be, and still attract heroic attention and acclaim.

But Dundee has already been labelled a 'UNESCO City of Design': see - http://www.dundeecityofdesign.com/ : and all without any transformation? Gosh, what is this label? Well, there will apparently be some changes: it will involve 'a whole area of the waterfront,' so the reporter said. It sounds like a good start for a place that wants to be like Bilbao; well, a tourist attraction as alluring as Bilbao has seemingly become. The once grimy industrial city at the top of Spain has been transformed into a glistening icon for the world. Everywhere dreams of becoming a tourist attraction in this manner, such is Bilbao's success at drawing attention to itself, and international money. Success breeds envy and copyists. Just look at the number of places that now have something like the London Eye, even if these are just like the large Ferris wheel that Brisbane has on its riverside. The Dundee blurb continues, promoting the idea – exactly what is this? - as 'a catalyst for social change; a one billion dollar regeneration plan; a renaissance for Dundee.' What other grand phrases can be conjured up in the attempt to convince everyone of the brilliance of the concept? Usually things uncertain, pompous and pretentious, false, are given the most promotional praise.

The question is: why does Dundee need a 'Renaissance' when it has already been declared 'a UNESCO City of Design'? Is Dundee unhappy with itself? Is this all a conjurer's trick? Would Dundee rather be sunny Bilbao instead of a waterside Scottish city famous for making marmalade jam and short biscuits? Do we have too many slogans here? Has the world lost all sense of trying to understand ordinary life and its ordinary, simple, unselfconscious living? Has the hype of marketing and media promotion set the examples for expectations in everything we now do? - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/architectural-language-problem-of-hype.html Is it that if these exaggerated, fanciful perceptions are not matched, then everything in life is seen as being lesser, poorer, inadequate? Is only the exceptional noted and now searched for in the extremes of impossibilities presented as likely ambitions?: 'You too can be a star like ME!' Why would I want to be? It is all hype, exaggerations that seem planned to heighten everyone's inadequacy, everyone's need for more and more in a consumer world of unrequited want.

Sadly this attitude seems to have become the norm, with things ordinary and everyday being relegated to the insignificant and unnoticeable; the irrelevant. Only the outrageous and startling in things, everything, is considered worthy of comment and attention: of 'stardom.' The media thrives on the promotion of this impossible iconic ideal: "Headless man on Viagra crosses Niagara Falls upside down" would be a headline that would surprise few, such is the style of media announcements in succinct, brash HEADLINE BOLD these days. Regretfully, nothing other than this excessive exuberance has become acceptable for awards and recognition in most fields of endeavour.

Buddhism is one religion that does attend to the little things in ordinary life. We might look at these writings and try to learn and understand that things exceptional are not the norm. Life is about suffering, best attended to by knowing – knowing that one is walking, collecting water, and firewood, as the Zen monk points out: being aware of being. It is not about being aware of being something else, or wanting to be this. The daffodil in sunlight; the light on water; the line of the hills against a bright sky - yes I write from the Shetland Isles on a beautiful sunny day, 10 April 2015 - are all tiny daily occurrences, ordinary, rich in beauty, unpretentious, but exceptional in themselves for being themselves and desiring no extraordinary interpretative demands on others, while remaining quietly exemplary. Things that seek to be exceptional attract and distract.

REX Architecture's proposal for the new V&A Dundee

Is it sufficiently exceptional?

The sad lust for the exceptional, that is ironically only ever exceptional and nothing more, sets a poor example. It is a singular ambition that specializes in blind, narrow self-promotion complete with empty visions of brilliance, of self-proclaimed genius: ME. That the natural 'exceptional' quality, as in the daffodil, can be so ordinary in all of its subtle complexity is something that we need to understand and replicate in our works. Tradition knew this.

The proposed Kuma V&A for Dundee

The 'Guggenheim' one gets when one cannot have one?

The worry might be: is it different enough?

It is not easy to touch the quality of things subtle: but making things exceptional, different, quirky, is easy. Look at the random twists, angles, skews and inversions in Gehry's work. The only difficulty seems to be in the interpretation of the scribble, its transformation into formal documents from which a form can be built. Such ad hoc distortion and manipulation ensures attention, but one fears that it will be short-lived, interesting for just a few minutes. It holds nothing of the resonance of the glow of the daffodil in the glorious sunlight blazing in from a white sky - such is its brilliance. The daffodil is not trying too hard to be something else; nor does it want to be. There is contentment in things wonderfully ordinary that is difficult to grasp, hard to comprehend; a struggle to replicate. The daffodil's ordinariness tells more than any shattering collection of its pieces might, even though Mr. Gehry would make the assemblage look intriguing under his branding. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin (Matthew 6:28). The flower holds more hope, encourages more understanding in its simple wholeness than any clever recreation, no matter how smartly such a collage might be explained. The flower is life-enhancing. The Gehry's, et al., works, (why just pick on him?), appear to glorify the outcomes of war, of death and destruction, demise: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/new-gehry-projects-in-aleppo.html , rather than enriching life, such is their legacy; their rude search for things smart, super-clever, extreme - exceptional. They are not; they are merely the self-conscious outcomes of individuals working hard to do something 'different,' little more; and few are willing to question it: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/is-todays-architecture-hoax_16.html

We need to learn that traditionally, historically, beauty grows in strength by trying to be the same - by using established forms, patterns and understandings to do ordinary, expected things, elegantly, gracefully; to enrich being with a new clarity and wonder what is truly familiar to all. Constantly creating things extremely different so as to startle, complete with uniquely invented explanatory narratives and rationales that seek to tell us what and how to see, will only keep the annoyed, bamboozled folk noticing only the search for acclimation, for ME & MINE to be noticed rather than to reveal any quiet depth of quality in a work seen at best as being 'more modest,' lesser for not being 'state of the art' or 'cutting edge.' The ordinary is just put down as bland 'ordinary.' Kevin McCloud is constantly pointing this out in his popular, frequently repeated television programme Grand Designs: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/is-architecture-just-grand.html

'World Class' Kengo Kuma's V&A proposal for Dundee

(see THE VISION below)

It is as though the 'self-appointed genius' seeks to be the clever surfer playing with the drama of the random surface, while the other more modest, humble individual quietly plumbs the wonder of the depths, the unseen silence, the still permanence that lies below the immediate, frivolous variations above that attract with their dramatic splashes. Where is the quiet centre in life? How can we get close to it? Do we need to? The desire for the exceptional will not get us there, or anywhere but into the realm of dramatic, distracting entertainment that is likely to just sweep us away in the enthusiasm of the rip, the undertow. Dundee must learn this: it must learn to be Dundee, not wish for a Bilbao future. Who could think of anything worse?

See: http://www.dundeecityofdesign.com/

The city made its application to UNESCO in 2014.

Dundee's application: see - http://www.dundeecityofdesign.com/downloads/Dundee%20City%20of%20Design%20-%20Summary%20Document.pdf Ironically the application itself seems to demand self promotion.

EXTRACTS:

OUR AMBITION

In 2013, Dundee was voted one of the world’s seven most intelligent cities for the third time in five years – an indicator of our city’s cultural and intellectual health – and its ambition. We will use designation as a UNESCO Creative City to help connect design knowledge, ideas and experience from around the world; but it is also an opportunity for us to connect parts of our city more effectively, and to create an integrated, sustainable design ecology that creates a virtuous circle of support.

One hopes it is 'virtuous'! We wouldn't want Dundee to be seen as 'SIN CITY.'

THE VISION

OUR CREATIVE FUTURE We’ve worked hard to get to this point. Dundee instinctively understands the need for design, planning and creativity as essential components of a growing city. But Dundee’s future is most exciting; with potential to engage design not only with industry but also the general public. Dundee’s vision is to create a city with design, culture and creativity at its heart. Plans include:

• V&A MUSEUM OF DESIGN, DUNDEE – The first design museum in the UK outside London, an international centre of design for Scotland, in an iconic building designed by world-class architects Kengo Kuma Associates. It aims to develop a greater focus on the value of design, promoting understanding of the UK’s design heritage; showcasing international design through large-scale exhibitions, providing opportunities for our own design talent, inspiring young people and fostering relationships between creative design, business and enterprise. V&A Dundee will deliver its first full year of programming in 2017, but in the run up will deliver a wide range of activities to raise awareness of design amongst a diverse audience.

• KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE HUB, DESIGN IN ACTION – Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, a partnership of 6 academic institutions and creative companies, based at the University of Dundee. The project seeks to build economic capacity and capability through design-led innovation, delivering sector specific residential innovation events where people with different skills come together to solve complex problems and to develop solutions into products.

• DISTRICT 10 – Development for the creative industries including live-work space, incubator facilities and business space. The first units, constructed from recycled shipping containers, opened in November 2013.

• UNIVERSITIES – Both the Universities of Dundee and Abertay will continue to develop innovative education programmes, and engage in design based research.

• DIGITAL WATERFRONT – Developments include the creation of a Digital Waterfront offering nextgeneration networks, advanced broadband and Wi-Fi connections to support the growth of digital industries. This could include public display screens, free Wi-Fi, state of the art fibre broadband, a games test centre, creative/digital media incubator and event space with digital capabilities.

• PARTNERSHIP WORKING AND INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT – The city has a long history of successful partnership working, and its organisations are involved in a wide range of transnational activities, from European funded projects to research collaborations, from conferences to work experience placements. The Council is currently engaged in 3 transnational European projects:

INTERREG IVB – North Sea Screen Partnership;

INTERREG IVC – InCompass, Sustainable Creative Incubators and URBACT CityLogo;

and V&A Museum of Design, Dundee is being delivered by a cross-city and national partnership involving the Council, the University of Dundee, Abertay University, Scottish Enterprise, Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Scottish Government.

• DUNDEE UP – The city’s cultural strategy for the period 2015-2025 places design at the core of its strategic priorities. Approved by the Dundee Partnership Management Group, it commits the partners to continuing the journey of culture-led regeneration, using design to generate a creative future for the city.

One has to ask: why will these things only happen under a 'UNESCO City of Design' label? Surely they might occur in the ordinary, everyday; or do we need slogans to live up to in every field of endeavour in these unusual times that seek to transform even a simple waterfront into a digital extravaganza? Does the waterfront lack something, or is it that folk these days cannot see, or do not want to see, the unique qualities of waterfront place?

NOTE:

Dundee is an interesting word. It has been used in the USA to brand an 'Aussie-Styled' yogurt complete with the cliché kangaroo in a map of Australia that even shows Tasmania! The name is probably picking up on the popularity of the classic Aussie character, Crocodile Dundee rather than the Scottish city, its jam or biscuits. It is strange, because in Australia, it is the Greek-styled yogurt that gets promoted as being superior. The grass, it seems, is always greener elsewhere. The hype continues to tell us this. Contentment is not good enough. It just does not help sell sufficient product or draw enough attention to itself.

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.

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

THE DESIRE FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL – DUNDEE BY DESIGN

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