voussoirs: HADID IN NEW YORK

Thursday 8 April 2021

HADID IN NEW YORK

We thought that we would walk the High Line this day, and take the opportunity to visit Piano's much promoted new Whitney Museum of American Art on the westside. It was a pleasant morning, so we strolled across to Central Park North and caught the subway to 14th Street. From here we walked through the Chelsea Markets, then on towards the Hudson, and turned left into 10th Avenue. The destination was only a few blocks away.

The museum disappointed. It seemed to be blind to its context, trying to express itself with a rationalised, self-conscious pomp to flamboyantly present a bespoke, aggregated image. One passed meat workers loading vans on the approach to the building that fronted a busy clutter of roadways and freeways bordering the Hudson River. It seemed a strange location for such a building. On reaching the museum, all the clues for entry led us to a main door on the west that we found, much to our embarrassment, permanently closed. The entry had to be discovered on the south, off the road that led to the High Line.

The closed western entry with chairs enigmatically spaced out to survey the passing traffic:

sit here, but do not enter. One wondered if the chairs were an art installation.#

The self-conscious architectural detailing seems almost obsessive; concrete is more difficult to manage.

This annoying fumble with the reading of the building did not make for a good introduction. It proved to be indicative of the whole arrangement. The ground floor looked like an amorphous sprawl of reception counter, cafe, and shop, as if it was a subsequent fitout solution rather than a planned strategy shaping place; it looked like an afterthought that made the western entry redundant.

It has been suggested that one can learn a lot about a building from the toilet detailing.

As one moved to the lifts to access the upper gallery levels, one realised that the graphic indicators and the lift doors were concealed from view, leaving one scrambling for any blind arrival of an available lift car once one was discovered, with frustrating trial and error attempts to reach each in time. Someone had not thought about the visitors in a place designed to encourage them.

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley."

Gallery voids.

Trying to sort out the various gallery levels when at least two were closed, turned into another frustrating guessing game. There seemed to be a struggle to get any density with the exhibitions that were open. These appeared just too spacious, as if the curators might be scrambling to fill the voids in some meaningful manner. Perhaps the place had opened too early?

Because I can - ?

The promotional image with happy crowds.

The unpeopled reality offers a stark presence.

The problem with wedged place.

The context.

The western deck with the river view.

On an upper level, one discovered a deck and bridging walkways that, perhaps just because they could, opened up to the eastern surroundings, highlighting the stark difference with context, similar to that experienced on arrival. This considered building overlooked the ad hoc clutter of city life and its infrastructure. Was this museum the seed building for the redevelopment of this precinct? The project looked deliberately theatrical; an attempt to be something special using quirky materials, forms, and expensive details as highlights. It appeared as an assemblage, with a bit here, and something else there; maybe parts seen before in Piano's other works? Might it have been a Piano potboiler, a collection of inspired pieces from other projects as seen in Richard Rogers' Sydney office tower?

8 Chifley, Sydney by Richard Rogers

The Whitney gallery ceiling system.

Is the tailored, bespoke detailing a required Piano signature?

The Whitney stair / balustrade detail

The stair to the High Line.

We left disappointed, knowing that the promise of free entry at a later date to make up for the shambles meant nothing to us. We strolled up the road and discovered the stairs that led up to the High Line at its southern terminus, and started our northern journey.

The walk proved to be a well-considered and sensitively detailed experience; it was a joy to discover. The scheme had been designed thoughtfully and with care, with an awareness of the complexity of the experience and its possibilities, revealing a sensitivity to the various little things that can be done to encourage others to explore, e.g., a quiet place to rest; an axial vista to pause at and enjoy; a rail track detail that reminded one of the past function; a link to the city below. It was in stark contrast to the museum.

As the path slid over the blocks, it cut a surprising cross section through building forms and functions, along spaces both public and private, linking with numerous connections to the various parts of the city it traversed, using both grand and tiny stairs and lifts just where they were needed. The High Line proved to be an enjoyable walk, a welcoming design happy to accommodate all with a nonchalant, but managed ease: it cared for the little things in life.

Towards the northern end, on the narrow straight stretch before the walk swung west, a surprisingly distinctive, large new building loomed. What might this be? The exposed floor slabs fingered together decoratively and intricately at the inside bend of the 'L' plan, stretching out to the limits to frame vast areas of floor to ceiling glass with apparent cantilevers, making a grand 'high five' gesture towards the High Line. It seemed incongruous that the public way would be acknowledged in this dramatic way.

The detailing of the sculptural concept is admirable.

ZAHA HADID

Behind the glass workers could be seen fitting out the spaces. One could see bathroom fixtures and kitchen cupboards exposed to full public view. Were these really apartments on view for all those on the High Line, or office spaces? Some areas were only metres away from this public thoroughfare. Who had done this? The name was there on grand display: ‘Zaha Hadid.’

The building has an awkward, very close relationship with the High Line; it imposes on this public way.

Moving on to the adjacent road frontage, the name appeared again high on the rooftop: 'Zaha Hadid' – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-new-new-brutalism.html The declaration was in bold black and white, even though she had passed away: the name had become a brand. It was 'Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid,' just to emphasise the point, along with the promotional contacts for the apartments: '520 West 28th' - it was an apartment building by Hadid's office. Was one expected to see quality and value here in this open, very public display just because of the name? The street elevation lacked the three dimensional possibilities of the 'L' but still managed to include a 2D version of the decorative intersecting slab edges, just to continue the theme. The whole project appeared contrived; it seemed to be a real effort to get the expected flamboyant 'Hadid' forms into a development on a tight, city site.

A set of stairs from the High Line provides access to 28th Street close to the apartment block.

One was flabbergasted. Just what was going on here? Had architecture come down to a few clever twists and a starchitect's name: Hadid's office - first New York building? Was one looking at an outcome shaped by an office that no longer had rigour in its inspiration or driving force? One thought of the work Wright's office churned out after his death: projects that tried to look like something Wright might have done by referencing the past, when the master always referenced the future, explaining once how his best building was his next one.

The divisions in the facade are purely decorative in intent - boldly stylish.

A screen is used to separate a bedroom balcony from the neighbour's living room balcony.

It seems important for the glass balustrade to maintain its continuity, to keep up the appearance.

This 'Zaha Hadid' building seemed to struggle to transform a very simple and straightforward plan and form into a complex with a difference. The dramatic, flowing 'Hadid'-styled appearance seemed to take so much effort in this shaping and precise, pristine detailing, that the comfort and convenience of habitation appeared to have been forgotten, along with its context. This apartment block seemed to ignore its neighbours, an oversight that, in this case, appeared to be a major problem for anyone hoping to share in the glory of the name. The building looked like it was trying hard to impress those nearby rather than respond to the needs of those it sheltered.

A bathroom made to fit the form.

The elegance of the detailing seems more important than the size and shape of the window for any room.

Occupants of these apartments would be on full view of everyone walking the very popular and busy High Line. With the effort to style the intersecting lines of the elevation, and to emphasise the sculptural clarity of the concept, the full height glass walls lined all interior spaces similarly, be these bathrooms, toilets, bedrooms, living rooms, or kitchens. Every space was potentially on full, equal public display, just for the appearance alone. No one seemed to care about the lived experience; just, perhaps, the publicity images in the magazines.

The change in levels leads to some very tricky planning.

This stepping has none of the necessity that one sees in Corbusier's use of levels in the Unite d' Habitation building.

Note the position of the columns in each of the rooms, just to maintain the linear, interlocking, glassy facade.

The idea for the elevations seems to establish the requirement to step in the levels.

(This is the eastern elevation: the elevation facing the High Line.)

Corbusier's Unite d' Habitation

Does the building propose a life behind curtains?

The misaligned columns can be seen through the glass.

The High Line is immediately to the right, just out of the frame.

It all made an extreme mockery out of Sullivan's idea of form 'follows function.' Here, form followed concept irrespective of function. The building is an extreme example of self-conscious style. How could anyone live behind this glass without turning the space into a curtained or louvred enclosure that would change the whole idea? Should one really have to suffer a lack of privacy just to be in an 'Hadid' building? Or is it that those who can afford to live in the Hadid brand must be and want to be seen? Surely neighbours in the apartments do not want to stare at each other across the 'L' void, or at others across the street? The curtains seemed to answer these questions.

We walked on to the end of the High Line that fizzled out into a sprawling deck and a track that overlooked the Hudson Yards. The Heatherwick Bowl was being fabricated: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/step-well-steps-but-no-living-water.html Has style really become the core driver for form, for life? One does wonder what Hadid might have designed for this apartment block?

W28th Street elevation is a decorative curtain wall styled to match the stepped theme.

There are lessons to be learnt here, with warnings from the Piano and Hadid buildings that seek a dominant presence through bespoke style; it is the High Line that sets the best example with a design that caters for and cares for people with a subtle integrity and an approach that knits neatly into the city context, caring for it without any boasting; enriching the experience and function of place with a modest, quiet calm, rather than a grand, styled declaration of form that screams out "Look at ME!"

One has to wonder where the images of these two projects used for publicity have been taken from;

one also should be aware of the 'real estate' technique that has been used here:

an isolated, wide angled photograph of the building has been taken at dusk with all lights blazing.

We need more High Line than Hadid or Piano. The point here is that two projects carry the name of an architect, a starchitect; the third, like traditional architecture, holds its values in the outcome, not the name, as all good work should. "Ye shall know them by their fruits." Matthew 7:16 KJV

SOME GOOGLE IMAGES

A vision of open living for the magazines? Which space gets the tiny window?

Does it matter?

The High Line has been carefully excluded from this image.

SCHUON ON ART

But as soon as artistic initiative becomes detached from tradition, which links it to the sacred, this guarantee of intelligence fails and stupidity shows through everywhere: aestheticism is moreover the very last thing that can preserve us from this danger.

The purpose of art of every kind – and this includes craftsmanship – is to create a climate and forge a mentality; it thus rejoins, directly or indirectly, the function of interiorizing contemplation.

True genius can develop without making innovations: it attains perfection, depth, and power of expression almost imperceptibly by means of the imponderables of truth and beauty ripened in that humility without which there can be no true greatness.

Frithjof Schuon Principles and Criteria of Art Chapter 1

GOOGLE EARTH / STREET VIEW

Curtained glass

SEE:

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-need-for-street-view-in-architecture.html

and

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-importance-of-street.html

Who knows what art is today, or what to do with it?

See:

https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/east-asia/graffiti-art-accidental-damage-seoul-b1826626.html

NOTE

11 April 21

The difference in the Piano and Hadid design strategies is interesting. Piano works hard to develop special, precise, rationally sophisticated detailing, and organises spaces in much the same carefully considered, somewhat diagrammatical manner to provide a place for his inventions. Hadid’s approach can be likened to car design, where style is critical, and everything else is manipulated to achieve an appearance.

See:

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/09/zahas-architectural-car-design-strategy.html

and

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-car-and-boat-contrasting-design.html

Piano’s strategy is more like the approach seen in boat detailing, but is far more intentionally contrived for bespoke elegance. The difference is something like that seen in the Bond downpipes and those installed by the local plumber: see -

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/11/bond-downpipes.html

The design strategy for the High Line can be described as piecemeal pragmatic. Here each situation is considered for its circumstance, its potential, with the idea of responding not only to context, but also to frame experience – always wondering how this can be embodied and enriched in all of its complexity, while managing an integrated wholeness. The approach realigns the attention that Piano and Hadid give to their work by placing the importance on the user. Style and detailing are here used to create place to fit functions and feelings: to accommodate these with an ease and comfort – a certain homeliness rather than a self-conscious grandeur.

12 APRIL 2021

SEE: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/on-planning-meaning-mental-structures.html

13 APRIL 2021

As an aside, it is interesting to note the diagrammatic similarity between the plans of the Whitney Museum and Falling Water. The museum has a service core edge with adjacent public spaces and galleries; Falling Water has its structural walls, service areas, and stairs on one edge, with the spaces stretching out to the cantilevered terraces: but the buildings could not be more different.

Whitney Museum

Falling Water

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.

Thursday 8 April 2021

HADID IN NEW YORK

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