Monday 20 March 2023

THE BROCH - SYMBOL & PLACE

In trying to understand just what a broch might have been, structures of similar forms in other places and cultures have been reviewed. The proposition adopts the catchphrase of Modernism, 'form follows function,' coined by Louis Sullivan, and develops the theme that similar forms might have the same rational functions. So it has been that we have The Desert Broch and The Chinese Broch - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-desert-broch-ksar-de-draa.html and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-chinese-broch-hakka-tulou.html - ideas developed from the various circular forms that have appeared from time to time and have stimulated one's interest.

It was a segment in Griff's Canadian Adventure that caught one's attention this time, not with a circular structure; it was the section of the traditional longhouse that aroused one's curiosity. One was intrigued by the occupancy and use of the various levels accommodating this ancient way of life that was centred around an axial array of fireplaces - one for every two families. One immediately thought of the broch section that indicated levels around an open core with a central fireplace below.

The longhouse was indeed long; it accommodated multiple families in a timber-framed structure clad with sheets of bark sewn on, layered as shingles. The framing formed three ledges on each side of a central isle - ground with two above - and was shaped to create a semi-circular roof form. The commentary that accompanied the images explained that this was a matriarchal society; the husband moved in once married: the longhouse was shared by many families.

The voice-over continued, noting that the lower level at the ground was for firewood that kept the fires going 24/7; the next ledge was for sleeping and general living purposes; the upper level was for the storage of food. This level was uninhabitable because of the smoke from the fires. It was explained that the longhouse was a completely sealed space; the smoke collected in these upper levels and deterred pests as it preserved the food. Other sources record that the longhouse, that can be over 90 metres in length, had openings in the top of the roof to let the smoke out. This discrepancy makes little difference to the notion that sees the upper space of the longhouse as being uninhabitable; it would still have been very smoky, acting something like the smoke chamber of the typical open fireplace, at the base of the flue.

One wondered: might the levels of the broch have been used similarly? One pondered the possibility of the lower entry level being for firewood/peat, and other working/wet stores, with a central fire burning 24/7. The argument for this area not being a byre has been put previously. The notion that this is a 'wet' area comes from it's function as an entry space, a transitional zone, as well as the understanding of the movement of moisture: up from the ground; through the external wall - there is no cavity at this level; and down from the outer 'wet' skin of the twin walls above.

This is one of the very few illustrations to suggest framing above a wet area;

perhaps there is too much framing?

One could further hypothesize that the upper levels over this space, in the 'dry' areas, could have been used for food storage, with the smoke acting likewise both as a deterrent and a preservative. This idea would involve a sealed cap to these storage levels to contain the smoke. The idea of the uppermost 'chapel' accessed by the intramural stair^^ offers this opportunity to seal off the stores, leaving the smoke to percolate out through the openings in the inside wall and eventually through the drystone, external wall. The smoke from a fire in the 'chapel,' if there was one, could percolate through the thatched roof as it did in the blackhouse, keeping vermin out.

This model of functional occupancy hypothesizes a lower, ground level, general purpose 'wet' space, a working, in-between area that acted as a foyer too. Above this, on the number of levels required by the village - the proposition suggested here is that brochs could have been constructed in stages as cathedrals were - the store areas were suffused in smoke and accessed by ladders from the foyer below.

Diagram for possible staged development of the broch.

This is one of the few illustrations to suggest an upper communal space.

Above these levels, the 'chapel' space has been proposed, an isolated communal area accessed from the same foyer area by the intramural stair. This layering of the broch functions establishes a base of the everyday, with the less-accessed storage areas above to suit needs, and the more private 'chapel' above this again.

One could envisage this diagram as having a core axis mundi, with the base everyday layer transitioning up to the more isolated and less-frequented storage spaces providing the general sustenance for life, with the spiritual layer over this, providing the emotional sustenance. Above this, one might hypothesize a zone for god, or gods, or spirits.

Using the notion that everything in this cosmic world has its opposite, one might hypothesize a well for water as a lower sustenance level, and the underworld below this again, the home of other spirits.

Can a broch be seen as the wheel of life?

Can the intramural stair be seen as the path; the spiritual way?

The diagram can be seen to be something like the chakras in yoga, and the layers of cosmic understanding in other creeds, parallels that could draw more subtle concepts and analogies; c.f. the core setout reference of the structure and it's possible meanings: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-building-brochs-thinking-doodles.html. One has to remember that early man was not schizophrenic when it came to emotional understandings and the relationship with the world. He was 'at one,' with things exoteric, all carrying an equivalent, but esoteric meaning. Reality and mystery were intertwined, integrally.+

Given this, one could see the broch as a living example of the cosmos, a model of the universe, incorporating not only the everyday, but also things more exotic and subtle.* Here one can see the role of the intramural stair holding a complex significance. Linking the everyday to the world of the gods, the narrow, dark stair could be seen as the testing 'way' both in reality and as symbol. The stair rises from the everyday, bypassing the physical sustenance in reality and symbolically along the 'narrow path of righteousness,' ignoring the temptations of life as it moves to the spiritual sustenance where more symbols illuminate beliefs and hold meaning in place at the centre of the world, that is the same core of the everyday spaces below and around. We have to remember that the images of the stairs that we see today are those of relics seen in a different light.

Mousa broch.

Dun Troddan.

Midhowe intramural stair.

All broch activities cluster around and are joined by the same centre, the axis mundi, with an upward and downward movement. Thinking about the inversion, one has to ask about the underworld and the dead. How did this era handle death? Might the well have been the entry to the underworld? Could the dead have been interred in the lower level of the broch, with the bones eventually being moved to an ossuary? Here one thinks of the archaeological finds on Orkney that suggested the dead were managed in this manner. Could the recesses in the base of the broch have been something like those in Maes Howe? More needs to be known about this, but something significant must have happened with the dead. Were there burial grounds outside the village precinct?

A cosmic circumambulation.

While these hypotheses need more research, the model does offer a rich and coherent concept for understanding broch functions both as factual matters and as things spiritual; we can see how the broch might be vital and meaningful, an essential place for the community's well-being, both in the everyday and spiritually. The right angle is not just an abstraction. It is the human being itself in nature.* Is the broch that nexus between 'the human being itself' and 'nature'? This symbolic interpretation of the broch offers a cohesive role for a place of communal importance and significance, with a demanding dominance because of this fact alone, rather than as an expression of brazen power as broch researchers like to explain. The display of intimidating power might be there, but it can be seen to arise from the raw necessities of being rather than as some self-conscious, self-centred, proudly threatening display.

One discards the notion of a lord-and-serfs relationship, with the 'lord' somehow occupying the pride of place in the broch, while the serfs suffer, squashed and submissive in their hovels. Rather this hypothesis suggests a more democratic, co-operative community that might operate somewhat like a monastic enterprise.^

Broch of Gurness

At the heart of this understanding lies notions of spirituality. To test these thoughts and ideas, more needs to be known about the emotional life of these times. What can be noted is that this interpretation goes further in accommodating the notion of wholeness that those in older times shared with nature, where there was a rich ground of subtle experience that was ingrained in everyday symbolism, revealed in things ordinary.# It is really just too easy for the analytic mind to suppose broch dwellers were sceptics like us; and just as easy for rational research, that demands facts as proof, to acknowledge or consider only matters 'real and measurable.'

The basic proposition has been taken from Ananda Coomaraswamy: that we can only truly understand other times and their works through the eyes, ideas, and emotions of those who lived in these times: this remains our challenge. By seeking out possible clues as parallels in forms and functions in other societies, we are hopefully avoiding our own personal interpretations of how we think a broch could have been. We are, at the very least, opening ourselves to realities lived by others, knowing that, at the core of things, man is basically the same.

Clachtoll broch.

So we have a composite interpretation drawn from older sources and new, thoughtful interpretations that seek to avoid the known traps of personal invention. It was Coomaraswamy who noted the prevalence of egocentric, personal creations drawn from one's own experiences and promoted as 'self-expression,' as being misguided distractions, distortions, rather than anything informative or cleverly 'creative.' Real meaning has roots in tradition, its necessity; in the transmission of origins rather than being cleverly 'original' as in being 'bespoke.' So it is that we need to look for levels of braided meaning with roots in reality and mystery, in our broch explorations: this is a start.

Dun Troddan intramural stair.

Muness Broch

As an example of the integration of meaning in everyday objects, one can use Aldo can Eyck's example given in Team 10 Primer, edited by Alison Smithson, Studio Vista, London, 1964: the Dogon basket. This functional item was made circular at the top, transitioning to a square base, being symbolic of the cosmos and earth held in one practical piece of homely craft made for everyday use. It offered a constant reminder of heaven and earth to the user. Tradition is about remembrance as well as transmission: the memory of origins. One needs to see the broch world through this ordinary, poetic complexity rather than through our own cleverly efficient eyes.

“To make presences emerge in the built environment (architecture) that evoke emotions, essential factors in the phenomenon of poetry.”

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.77

Note on brochs: This was an era when everything was religious; there was no division between the secular and the sacred. The great irony with the recognition of this state of affairs is that broch research might acknowledge this fact, and then promptly ignore it.

The 'chapel' space located on the top of the broch would have located this most important of spaces in the most centrally remote part of the community. The Intramural stair was the direct connection, the beginning of the Circumambulation, the processional way that led directly to the sacred place from the everyday that was embraced by this gesture of worship: see THE BROCH - ITS INTRAMURAL STAIR.^^

For 3D digital model of Mousa Broch, see: https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2019/10/getting-measure-brochs/

The typical understanding of what a broch is is included in this link:

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Brochs-the-Tallest-Prehistoric-Buildings-in-Britain/#:~:text=Brochs%20are%20mysterious%20features%20of,brochs%20once%20existed%20across%20Scotland.

For a broad summary of broch matters and the references, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broch

For more on brochs. see;

https://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/brochs/brochs_architecture.htm

NOTE:

Sound & Form

‘Music is not the opposite of silence but its complement. When Indians play music, they hide because they know that music, even more dangerously than language, leaves them exposed.’

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.75.

One has to wonder, not only about the language of the broch era, but also its music, and how the broch dwellers responded to this – and where; in what context? Was music considered to be ‘dangerous’? What sounds emanated from the broch?

The right angle is human intelligence bringing space toward the vertical line dedicated by weight, and toward the horizontal plane along which our eyes move and within which they settle in their search for the infinite. It is the axis of all things, the reference without which we cannot locate anything, especially ourselves. It is the order toward which our thinking process brings all natural forms that are unpredictable, random, and sometimes chaotic. It is the geometrical order in relation to which we look at the world and we think.

The right angle is not just an abstraction. It is the human being itself in nature.

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.84

Did the broch order the lives of the times? Was it the conceptual element that located man in nature? Was it the ‘right angle,’ the axis mundi - human intelligence bringing space toward the vertical line dedicated by weight, and toward the horizontal plane along which our eyes move and within which they settle in their search for the infinite?

One only has to read about the highland clearances to realise that the 'simple' crofters were highly intelligent and articulate people, not merely the cliché country yokels or village idiots.

22 March 2023

NOTE:

Axis mundi

The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, columna cerului, center of the world), in religion or mythology, is the world center and/or the connection between Heaven and Earth. As the celestial pole and geographic pole, it expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The spot functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.

The image is mostly viewed as feminine, as it relates to center of the earth (perhaps like an umbilical providing nourishment). It may have the form of a natural object (a mountain, a tree, a vine, a stalkk, a column of smoke or fire) or a product of human manufacture (a staff, a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a maypole, a cross, a steeple, a rope, a totem pole, a pillar, a spire). Its’ proximity to heaven may carry implications that are chiefly religious (pagoda, temple mount, minaret, church) or secular (obelisk, lighthouse, rocket, skyscraper). The image appears in religious and secular contexts. The axis mundi symbol may be found in cultures utilizing shamanic practices or animist belief systems, in major world religions, and in technologically advanced "urban centers". In Mircea Eliade's opinion, "Every Microcosm, every inhabited region, has a Centre; that is to say, a place that is sacred above all."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_mundi

23 March 23

BROCH TEXTS

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-symbol-place.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-brochs-enigma-of-meaning-form.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-desert-broch-ksar-de-draa.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2012/07/mousa-broch.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-chinese-broch-hakka-tulou.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/building-brochs.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-architecture-shapes-and-moulds.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/brochs-thinking-scribbles.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-game-of-brochs.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-building-brochs-thinking-doodles.html

26 MARCH 2023

NOTE

Religious experience

It is difficult today with our rational, scientific scepticism to have any idea of what might be called the ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ understanding of other times. While not seeking to pretend that Sufism might have any relationship to beliefs and practices of broch times, Islamic mysticism might help us touch on the depth and subtlety of things religious by way of example. Martin Lings has written on the subject, and points out that one should not pick and choose the preferred bits of different beliefs as a dilettante might.

We are not seeking to do this; we want to touch on an aspect of experience to show what can be involved in matters that have become alien to us. The quotes here have been taken from Martin Lings, What is Sufism? published by George Allen & Unwin, London, 1975:

p.64

‘It is Hidden in Its Own

Outward Manifestation wherein It doth appear

As Veil after Veil made to cover Its Glory.’

p.56

As an image of the primordial soul, the Seal of Solomon with its two triangles pointing in opposite directions figures an intense extroversion balanced - and dominated by – an intense introversion, the pull of the outer world being balanced by the pull of the Heart . . . and one of the functions of Heart-knowledge is to anticipate this regeneration by continually referring outward objects back to the inner realities they symbolise.

p.57

. . . the Book of Nature, the Primordial Revelation whose hieroglyphs are man and the animals, the forests and the fields, the mountains, seas and deserts, sun, moon and stars. One of the Qur’an’s most central teachings is: ‘Do not look on the things of this world as independent realities, for they are all in fact entirely dependent for their existence on the Hidden Treasure whose Glory they were created to reveal.’

NOTE

3 APRIL 23

15 APRIL 23

See: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/04/belonging-architecture-broch-experience.html

3 MAY 2023

NOTE

We do need to try to get into the minds of ancient people if we are going to truly understand them and their buildings; but this is difficult: see -

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230428-the-puzzle-of-neanderthal-culture-and-aesthetics

The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Getting into the minds of ancient people, never mind those of a different kind of human altogether, is one of the great challenges of archaeology. Ever since the first Neanderthal remains were identified in the 19^th Century, how they lived and what they thought has been a fundamental and evocative question motivating those who study them. Yet despite immense leaps in archaeology over the past 160 years, the answer remains complicated and sometimes problematic, partly because of our own preconceptions.

10 Sept 2023

NOTE

Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn The Book of Certainty The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015.

p.21

But although today men are so far from the Paradise as to be almost beyond the reach of any reminder of it, the men of old were still near enough to be keenly aware of its loss; and indeed it is no exaggeration to say that the most of what the ancients have left behind them is stamped more or less clearly with the consideration of how a man might return to the Paradise and become once more the true man. It is for the sake of this return that the Lore of Certainty was given to man by means of the religions.

p.22

It is owing to the natural tendency of all earthly things towards degeneration that the proportion of those who follow the Path is much smaller in later than in earlier times.

1 OCTOBER 2023

NOTE

IS THE STAIR THE LADDER SYMBOL?

This is a brief note to follow up this thought. One has to ask if the intramural stair is a symbolic ladder, accessing other ‘higher’ worlds both literally and symbolically. As previously noted, this internal stair is likely to be the only one known to the broch inhabitants, thus holding a unique status just because of this. We are familiar with the concept of spiritual height with the ‘on high’ phrase alluding to heaven. The ladder symbolism reinforces the concept of the upper portion of the broch being a special, spiritual space/place.

Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn (Martin Lings), in The Book of Certainty, (The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015), writes about this symbolism and its significance:

p.38

What is true of earthly objects applies also to acts: an earthly act is the last of a hierarchy of corresponding shadows which spans the whole Universe. Figuratively speaking, if each series of corresponding shadows or reflections throughout the different worlds be likened to the series of the rungs of a ladder, an earthly act is the lowest rung, or rather as the support upon which rests the foot of the ladder, and to stand at the foot in upward aspiration is precisely what constitutes an act of remembrance in the sense of the word dhikr. The traveller may thus sanctify all his acts in seeking to remember, through them, the Divine Qualities in which they are rooted.

p.39

The ladder as a symbol of the true rite and all that this rite implies recalls the tree which is mentioned in he opening quotation as a symbol of the good word;

p.40

A profane book, on the contrary, has only one meaning and therefore no vertical dimension at all.

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.

Monday 20 March 2023

THE BROCH - SYMBOL & PLACE

Axis mundi

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