voussoirs: MORE ON BUILDING BROCHS

Friday, 26 April 2019

MORE ON BUILDING BROCHS – THINKING DOODLES

The papers from the preparation of BUILDING BROCHS, see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/building-brochs.html, were lying around as the coffee was poured the next morning; the pens were still there. One soon discovers the value of a mess. The eye looked at the preliminary round house plan again: might the posts be erected first? A sketch of the posts was made. Yes – it seemed likely: the centre could be identified and the hexagon marked out on the ground with a peg and a length of string. Then the holes would have to be dug and the poles erected, aligned and braced. This could all be done without the encumbrance of the walls that not only limited the construction area, but also restricted access to one location. The idea had practical merit.

Typical round house plans

The timber frame was drawn as it might look. From this start, the set out of the circle for the stone walls could begin. The timber frame became a permanent reference marker for location and orientation. Pegs, string and a template was all that was required to mark the circle. This could be managed progressively too, as the wall was constructed. It would be difficult to maintain the markings of the set out of the complete circle on a building site. With the core identified, the whole round house was able to be set out piecemeal. Once the walls had been erected, the roof could be finished, linking the walls to the central frame conically. It made practical sense: the challenges of building sites do not change with time. It is an environment in which precise set outs have to be achieved in the context of a dirty shambles. Might the broch have started similarly?

Typical broch plans

The rough sketch for the process of setting out concentric circles was picked up and perused. The pen began its scribblings. Peg locations could easily be marked out after the erection of the hexagonal frame that defined the centre. Parts of the walls were drawn in; a section was sketched. Once the braced frame was in place, the profiles of the walls could be set up radially on the ground and the walls begun. Once the first profile height had been completed, the first lift could occur. This would entail temporary scaffolding: the pens scrawled out a possibility. Inside and outside would have to align so that the profiles could be supported. The first lift would have the solid stone base as the support.

Stones could be lifted up to the working level of the scaffold. Once finished, the first lift would have reached the scarcement level. The scarcement would have been installed at this time as projecting slabs of stone; then joists could be put in place: but! - the scarcement needs mass above it for it to be a solid, stable, load-bearing element.* A temporary prop is needed to support the scarcement or the joists until the upper inner wall has sufficient mass to counter the floor load. Here one thinks of the temporary props used for concrete work; these stay in place until the concrete has cured and gained sufficient strength - usually about 28 days. Once the joists are in place, the next set of hexagonal poles could then be positioned. These would have to be joined so as to maintain the geometry of the hexagonal reference used for the set out. The doodling seemed to be giving substance, clarification to some lingering unknowns, even revealing new issues that had never before been noticed.

The beginnings of yesterday’s broch section scribble was picked up. Why not sketch in the parts here to consider the impacts? Ladders were drawn on the timber frame and a different roof was drawn in: maybe? A red pen was picked up to consider the scaffolding. Temporary scaffolds would be required inside as well as the permanent framing. These platforms needed to be co-ordinated with the temporary external scaffold to provide support for the wall profiles: but what holds the profile up between the walls? The stone ties could do this. Ah! Each lift in the scaffolding could also mark the position of the bridging stones that would be installed along with the top stones of each lift. Interesting.

The progressive lifts of the dry stone work are illustrated in this cross section.

The piles of stones were marked in to test the idea. Yes, the rocks could be placed at the working levels as things progressed. The space inside the hexagonal framing would be available for lifting, as well as for general access: but by this time, the broch entry would have been formed, limiting easy access to this lift area. Maybe the stones were transferred from the massive external piles with a lifting device that could deliver stones to the working platforms externally, and swing them over the walls onto the central, internal scaffold. This appeared to be a more practical and flexible arrangement. The floor joists were drawn in on yet another scribbled plan to see how they might set out. The radial pattern would concentrate the timbers at the hexagonal frame, and limit the minimum spacing. This seemed not to be a problem; but what material was used for flooring? Timber planks seems to be the first guess, but was this wood available? Might mats and clay have been used? The material would finally define the required joist spacing.*

Diagrammatic structural diagrams do not clarify or resolve thinking on brochs;

they only confuse, confound, and complicate.

The more one scribbled, the more things seemed to come together, or be further challenged. Everything appeared to confirm that the building of the broch started with the erection of the hexagonal timber frame that was the place marker, permanent set out reference for the circles, and the vertical axis for the alignment of the height of the walls. The system seemed to pass the building site test, and even offered a solution to the handling of the massive quantities of stone that were required at the various working levels. The permanent portions of the interior scaffold could be installed progressively, with the temporary scaffolding coming and going within this main framework that was supported at its perimeter by the scarcement, and centrally by the hexagonal frame. Once the dry stone walls had been completed, the lower temporary props for the scarcement loadings could be removed.

Could the lower space have been like the byre of the black house, dug out every summer?

This space could also be seen as incorporating the equivalent of the store area of the black house,

with the living space above rather than being parallel to it.

The set out plan diagram was returned to. Of course! The building process would have been started with a ceremony. Even today we have the laying of the foundation stone. One could envisage the marking of place, the axis mundi, the symbolic centre of the earth – the centre of the hexagon – with fire and smoke. Australian aboriginals have a smoking ceremony to cleanse space and place. One could imagine a priest or a shaman involved in a ceremony celebrating the beginning of this great enterprise, drawing the hexagon, placating the gods and blessing the land. It has always seemed that the lack of any spiritual explanation in the broch studies has been a fundamental weakness. To ancient man, the whole world was meaningful, symbolic. The building of the broch would have involved a spiritual celebration. Might the hexagon have meaning; the numbers 3, 6, 12? The Star of David was never just a Jewish symbol.#

The meaning of the beginning would always be the anchor of place; would always be there for remembrance, defining the connection between man and God: earth and heaven – the mystery of life itself. The axis mundi was there as nothing but everything, shaped by the hexagon. The hearth would become the permanent core, the anchor of life and space, with smoke rising into the heavens creating the ephemeral physical link between life and its enigmas. Tradition has always spoken about the importance of remembrance, of the importance of returning to, of remembering our origins. The beginnings of the broch would remain as a central reference, not only throughout its construction period for set out and scaffolding, but also for the whole life of the place, there for the everyday, for continued renewal of the spirit and the placation of the Gods.

The efforts to interpret broch functions must to go beyond the search for mere practical purposes.

They need to consider the spiritual context, and its symbolism.

Compare this roof with new 'iron age' roof images below.

Slowly, as one doodled and thought about the broch, the practicalities of construction and life became intertwined with things real and tangible; mystical and spiritual. This coherence resonated with reality: we cannot overlook the mysteries of life and the role they have played, and still play. Architecture has always involved these; but today we seem to have forgotten this. One only has to flick through Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture to see the thousands of historical structures rooted in the search for and celebration of meaning. Brochs could not have been removed from this involvement.

Today’s ponderings started with the scribbles on the round house plan, so this doodle was looked at again in order to test the theories revealed by the other scribbles. How might the idea of the priest/shaman/symbolism feel with the construction of the round house, the precursor of the broch?

The scan of Mousa broch showing its axial reference.

The pen was picked up again and wandered its way around the hearth marked on the plan. Yes, it would be like this. The point would be marked on the ground and the hexagon set out, just as we have ground-breaking ceremonies; the fire lit, the smoke rising as the blessings were chanted and danced into reality: real place was being marked and blessed to become the centre, not only of a structure, a permanent marker for its making, but also for life itself. The idea made wonderful sense in the simplicity of the round house. From this mystical centre, the hexagon could rise to become the markers for the circle, an enclosure both symbolic and real, reconciled by the structure of the roof. The void of the axis - the untouchable, unspeakable; that which cannot be named - is there, revealed as a location within the geometrical forming of the hexagonal frame, the hexagram, and enhanced by the conical form of the canopy. Daily life would have centred on this core, the central hearth, from which smoke would rise as the axis, co-joining man with spirit, even as food was being prepared. Every activity would relate to this place, just as it would in the broch. The layering and inter-relationship of logic and dreams in this theory enrich it and give it substance – poetic credence.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

T.S. Eliot

SYMBOLISM OF THE HEXAGRAM

As an aside, for a discussion of the symbolism of the hexagram, see:

https://masonicfind.com/an-ancient-star

Photo: Duncan-Enzmann, solstice symbol, Altamira Cave, 16,500 BC

With roots in prehistory, the evolution of this familiar symbol can be observed

with the following illustration of the winter solstice symbol, summer solstice symbol, and then combined solstices.

Winter Solstice -Spring Equinox-Summer Solstice-Autumnal Equinox-Winter Solstice

Illustration from Solomon’s Power Brokers

As with most symbols, the hexagram gained layers of meaning as it flowed through time, adapted and adopted by cultures, coming eventually to symbolize the union of opposites: male and female, fire and water, error and truth, active and passive, darkness and light, ignorance and wisdom.

*
It is for this reason that it makes no sense to interpret the scarcement only as a support for scaffolding as Brian Smith, (Shetland Museum and Archives), has argued. One would require temporary scaffolding to support the support for temporary scaffolding. The scarcement must have had another purpose. The proposition here is that it supports the permanent internal scaffolding/framing, keeping the perimeter timbers out of the lower ground space that has been zoned as a service space, a 'wet work area,' involving perhaps animals, waste, water.

P.S.
27 APRIL 2019

MORE DOODLES; MORE THOUGHTS

The broch building site: the beginning.

The roof is difficult to tie down - see below.

Note in report below that the smoke filters through the thatch.

The black house relied on this to keep the vermin out of the roof: see -

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-arnol-blackhouse-place-culture.html

The wall profiles can easily be set up radially.

They can also be used to set out the concentric circles from the set out of the inner circle.

This process avoids the need to work over any dry stone wall for set outs.

Profiles remote from the elements being set out are still used today.

The central hexagonal frame can be likened to the 3D profile of the broch.

The joists and fire - symbolically central.

The joists can put in piecemeal to act as scaffolding for the work at whatever stage/location.

The roof can be tied down in the round house, (as below), but not to dry stone walls.

Further tie down/bracing/stiffening elements are suggested.

Note that the roof can be erected and maintained from the perimeter, much like the black house, see:

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-arnol-blackhouse-place-culture.html

The temporary and permanent scaffolding.

Work can proceed on different stages in different locations.

The central hexagonal permanent structure provides the fixed reference point for all elements.

THE NEW 'IRON AGE' ROUND HOUSE

For images of a new 'iron age' round house, see:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2991380/Steel-overnight-stay-Devon-B-B-launches-Iron-Age-hut-guests-no-electricity-compost-toilet-just-single-cold-water-tap.html

The report says that the round house is '30 metres' in diameter; maybe it means 30 feet? The roof timbers are said to be from 28 foot lengths. Mousa broch is approximately 20 feet - 6metres - in diameter inside, (50 feet - 15 metres - outside at its base). The images give some idea of the technology and lifestyle of the era as we understand it.

If the rafters are 28 feet long, and the roof is 45 degrees pitch, then the inner diameter is close to 30 feet.

The roof would be approximately the size that would fit Mousa, to sit on its inner twin wall.

Note in the comments above the difficulty in fixing the framing to the dry stone wall.

This round house has no inner structural framing; it is tied down to the outer ring frame.

Traditional round houses do have inner posts.

Brochs would need inner framing not only for a structural profile reference, but also for floor spans.

28 APRIL 2019

Maybe everything to do with brochs is vague and uncertain?

This notice on the door of the Carloway Broch Centre tells visitors that the centre is:

Open

10am to 5pm (or thereabouts)

Monday to Saturday

Admission Free

The scarcement of the Carloway broch is clear, but it is uncertain if it was ever a continuous row of projecting stones, or a series of separate corbels. If it was the latter, these could have carried a segmental bearer for the joists to sit on. It does not change the purpose of the scarcement as the projecting stones still require the mass above to make them stable.

NOTE
25 February 2020

see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-planning-meaning-mental-structures.htm

NOTE

19 October 2020

Perhaps peat could have been used. One of the oldest houses on the island of Unst in Shetland, a cottage at Haroldswick, had an internal wall constructed out of peat. Peat is plentiful; it dries to a hard mass; and is a good insulator.

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.

Friday, 26 April 2019

MORE ON BUILDING BROCHS – THINKING DOODLES

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