voussoirs: ARCHITECTURAL JIGSAWS

The matter has been noted before as the issue that could be called oligarchitectural voids – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/03/oligarchitecture.html & https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-architectural-image.html This subject refers to the tendency of architectural photography to pick and choose segmented pieces of a project that make pretty, itemised, artfully composed shots for folk to drool over. The understanding of the whole is left to some imaginative exercise, a filling in of the gaps that is always nicely tainted with the ‘art’ of photography that isolates, excludes everything that does not photograph well, and everything that might be seen to be the simple, messy clutter of ordinary living, as well as any generally awkward architectural resolutions. Kitchens are photographed spic and span, without a crumb, a splash, or a dirty cloth – just as perfect, slick, surfaces sliding into space.

Children’s bedrooms are made formally suggestive by having the similarly spotless void decorated with one child-like item of interest that has never been played with, carefully placed for the photograph. Glossy, dust-free coffee tables might hold one cliché publication of appropriate size, colour, and location to add some ‘intellectual’ touch to things; hallways, likewise spic-and-span, might include a distant, blurred passing dog or fuzzy person, as if ‘Futurist’ - or perhaps a large, ceramic pot might suit the image better: frequently a designer chair is pulled into view, into a location to suit the composition rather than general, everyday use. No one would ever be likely to want to sit where one frequently sees chairs – but it does not matter: this is ART! These are the pieces provided for the challenge to start: find the whole.

One can see the presentation as a jigsaw – with photographic pieces being provided for the reader to try to assemble together to make the totality of the project as some kind of piecemeal collage in the mind. The number of pieces varies; the Oscar Niemeyer project seems to have the least, (see below) – his last project: what might this say? Usually there might be twelve to twenty pieces; but the task is always same: find out what the whole looks like by an additive process, an accumulation of photographic perceptions presented in the parts. There is something of the reverse jigsaw here: ‘What does the place look like?’ might equate to the ‘What did the gardener see?’ type of puzzle.

We need better than this if we are to truly understand what we are looking at; this strategy of presentation is just an artful game. It is simply not good enough to be so selective, seductive and so proud of the selection such that even the architect can be entranced by the guile of the lens that lets even this ‘creative’ person see things differently in personal work. In presentations, one frequently hears the architect say, with some obvious irony, “I’ve not had the project photographed yet,” when the project is being presented with images that the architect has apparently have taken as snapshots, artlessly, or as best he can. The message is that the jigsaw pieces have not yet been selected and published for the populace’s, and the architect’s, wonder and amazement – starting the fitting game: how might these bits be assembled?

The art of photography has transformed how we see and what we think of architecture. The most obvious examples are not only those in the dezeen daily selections, but also that of the Mareel in Lerwick, Shetland’s art centre. Here, in the Shetland Islands, a fairly basic, pretty-ordinary building has been carefully photographed so make it appear a stunning masterpiece. Surprisingly there are two precise locations that make this remarkable transformation – full points to the photographers who recognised these - that has to do with various optimal alignments in the building segments and parts, and its perspective vanishing points: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

The Mareel example highlights the problem with photography on the larger scale in architecture, exposing how technique can cheat the eye. The more intimate portions of the building that get selected for their similarly careful compositional wonder, play the same game with different pieces and parts at a different scale, leaving one to try to understand the whole as a staccato accumulation, a stumbling accretion of the clever, ‘arty’ framings that all make a set of remarkably pretty pictures that feel good.

The 'everyday' Mareel

We need an architecture that can survive the snapshot – that can hold its wonder in Street View: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-need-for-street-view-in-architecture.html & https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-hawthorne-house-context-place-street.html Without this, we have the Pevsner view of architecture: only things interesting and elite – cathedrals, never bicycle sheds. Our struggle for cathedrals takes us away from the ordinary snaps that fit comfortably into the everyday, to the exotic wonder of things bespoke and arty, those distorted framings created with unique lenses, wide and zoomed, that hint something of the wonder of the cathedral, without being one, mocking the ordinary beauty of the bicycle shed or modest beach house, as if these might not hold any use for things artful – for the lenses that seek out wonder as distortions.

Architecture struggles on in its flimsy manner, being designed as cars, self-consciously stylishly to match whims – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/04/why-do-we-design-everything-as-cars.html - with efforts always being aimed at achieving something cleverly eye-catching and uniquely different. We need to restructure our interests; try to regain some semblance of connection between meaning and our personal lives, so that, instead of walking around looking for WOW! - c.f. the House in the Country TV programme, e.g. - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/wow-world-and-me.html, we can share an existence with an enriching and reinforcing contentment that seeks not wonder, but shares in it, everyday, with no expletives, just joy. Without this we flounder about with indulgent selfies, wondering what to do with our lives as we seek out another’s praise ‘oligarchitecturally’; and yet another’s too, as many as possible ‘likes' from others all doing likewise as they pose in front of the latest WOW!, head skewed, mouth ajar in a WOW! scream, with arms flailing in pretend satisfaction of perpetual excitement.

Until these falsehoods are disregarded and replaced with true personal meaning and value both in life and in our built environment, we have little hope of any change. We will be all left constantly doing jigsaws, using fabricated pieces of unknown buildings or others’ lives, trying to make wonder out of the missing parts in a haze of envy – for the rule is that all, except me, is wonderfully great; astonishing! Reading between the lines, one can say that we spend our lives reading between the pieces, and seeing nothing but the bespoke parts being gloriously repeated, phantom-wise, as if this might be so, when things are usually all otherwise. If matters were really so good, why would the images be so selective? Why have the gaps? Everyday is rarely extreme hype on hype, in spite of the presentations.

Rigorous criticism as well as a knowing cynicism is needed in order to see through the piecemeal puzzle strategy. We all know how useless a jigsaw with just one missing part is – valueless as a satisfactory experience. Why do we fall for the guise that has many missing parts, believing blindly in its unseen, unedited wholeness?