COMPLEXITIES &
CONTRADICTIONS^
The notice arrived:
one was invited to get tickets. The formal process was followed, the
ticket reserved, and the date was put into the calendar. The evening
was the ASA (Abedian School of Architecture) 2023 Spring Show and
public lecture to be held on Tuesday, 19 September 2023, 5:45pm. The
‘renowned architect’ Peter Stutchbury (PS) was presenting the
talk, so it seemed that it would be an interesting occasion. One
would be able to see the students’ current projects and hear PS
talk about his work that one knew as being carefully considered and
meticulously detailed; striking in its bespoke clarity and intent.
Abedian School of Architecture.
The formality of the
ticketing system for these occasions always seems unusual,
unnecessary, as the evenings are free public events where tickets are
never asked for at the door. One complies and attends without
complaint; it seems that this is what one has to do. Maybe the
numbers are used for catering, as drinks and nibbles are provided?
The exhibition corridor space.
One arrived at the
event in the cool evening of a warm day; there was a light breeze as
the sun set. Folk were already milling around, chatting, drinking,
perusing the exhibition of the student work or ignoring it: was it
just all too familiar for some? One moved into the much-photographed
display corridor and began looking at the work placed on tables and
ledges, and adhered to walls, the notorious three dimensional
surfaces that make the mounting of exhibits difficult to manage in an
orderly fashion.
It had already been decided not to bring a pen and notebook to record matters for a
review of this exhibition and talk; one was just going to relax and
enjoy the presentation of projects and ideas: but the critical eye
does step in as one is confronted with the contradictions in the
complexity of designs and their display, giving rise to thoughts that
get fixed in one’s mind, to return yet again as one mulls over
matters later.
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The observations
were not too different to those made on an earlier occasion where a
similar exhibition was reviewed some years ago: see –
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/12/abedian-school-of-architecture-spring.html.
This time the displays reached from the floor to a height of about
three and a half metres or more, making parts of the exhibition
impossible to comfortably inspect, let alone read. Other portions of
the display were in the shadows, or had texts so small as to be
difficult to interpret in the gloom of the low level of light. One
wondered why a design-centred school would make such poor, basic
decisions. It is not as though the rigour of displaying on curved
tapering walls has not been explored previously - (by Andrew Kudless
at Bond) - or that good illumination might be a surprise requirement. Could it be that the display was just a matter of looking impressive,
rather than intending to be an intellectually informative exhibit
presented for close inspection, as there was a lack of guidance to
explain the context and relevance of what one was looking at and why?
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On perusing the
students’ illustrations, one could see lines mysteriously starting
nowhere in particular, and finishing likewise, highlighting the
classic CAD approach of adjusting and approximating relationships that
are left unresolved, to be covered up by the distraction of the slick
appearance of the shiny print. This ‘fuzzy, near enough' strategy is similar
to the careless ‘the builder will work that out on site’
approach in documentation: it never happens this way. When studied
more closely, plans were found to have problems with awkward, sometimes
impossible juxtapositions, and windowless rooms, all of which were
made to look amazing by the very convincing, dapper presentations.
Sectional drawings appeared to be a popular technique for the
illustration of an idea, an approach that frequently left one
wondering just what one was looking at other than an attractive,
slick print. The understanding of a project is enhanced by a section,
but the section alone tells very little about the whole.
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Large models of
various projects were generally schematic 3D diagrams seeking to be
expressively convincing, with thin strips of cardboard or plastic
suspended in the air to suggest long, high walkways between towers of
conglomerate sets of remarkably, (impossibly?), cantilevered blocks
that showed no obvious way of being built or suspended, but making
dramatic gestures for the passersby. It seemed that one was not meant
to scrutinise these things; just to be impressed by them.
The quality of the
presentation techniques far outstripped that of the intentions and
ambitions actually achieved in the final design work, leaving one
concerned about fairly basic design/communication failings that one
might have thought should have been raised in the progressive
critiques of the work. Just how was the school really managing these
matters?
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The core problem of
the exhibition was that it seemed to be structured for appearance
alone, leaving one uncertain about the context of the work, the
relationship between drawings, details, models, and the briefs,
and the educational intentions. This ambiguity left one in an
uncertain place where a critique could easily be misdirected, and
successfully challenged; but there were fairly basic matters that one
could grasp hold of and comment upon. There appeared to be a lack of
recognition of functional and structural requirements in both the
projects as presented on paper, and in the models. One was a little
perplexed with some of the projects, while being interested by
others.
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The ‘way to look
at the world’ studies - if this is what they were - seemed to set
analytical tasks for students to deconstruct artists’ paintings in
a way that no artist would ever consider or contemplate; and then
various gadgets appear to have been designed to see the world in a
particular manner, perhaps inspired by this analysis? One was sad to
see, for example, a William Robinson painting pulled to pieces and
‘explained,’ with the strategy then applied to another example -
reconstructed – apparently to give a necessarily ‘meaningful’
outcome because of this logic. All these studies were again slickly
pieced together into impressive glossy books, with the production
again outdoing the content. Was this exuberance just for this
display? One wondered what the task was intended to achieve. If this
was the best work of the school, what was the quality of the
remainder not on show?
William Robinson painting: The Revelation of Landscape.
The outcome of other
books was more clear, especially the ‘drawing class’
publications. It seems that drawing skills are no longer a
requirement for architecture, so students are given basic ‘how to
draw’ classes at university, using an analytical, step-by-step,
almost ‘kindergarten’ approach that defines the essential
progression required. It looked like the naïve, ‘You too can be an
artist’ approach – or was it ‘You too can be an architect’ .
. . ‘in six easy steps: as seen on TV’? One was concerned with
the deliberateness of the teaching; its rational, soul-destroying
certainty. Was everything just too considered; too prescriptive; too
rational?
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One was happier with
the ‘experimental materials’ studies; and the ‘working drawing’
books, but these needed more rigour. One wondered just what
supervision the students were getting, especially with tasks that
have specific approaches, defined techniques for clear communication,
and logical steps and strategies in presentation. Was the problem a
lack of construction knowledge or a disruptive interest in the final appearance? One got the feeling that an
infectious, communal excitement about approaches, ideas, and
production generally might have blinded everyone, both students and
staff, to the rigour required, both in the work itself and its
critique. The attractive perfection of computer outputs for
presentations, with a ‘no hands’ distancing that allows any
intimacy to be perceived as something mysteriously otherwise, has to
be managed carefully, as one can easily be encouraged to believe that
the spectacular ‘quality’ of printed outputs is an inherent part
of the ‘quality’ of the work, when it is clear that this is not
so: ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ comes to mind. There is an emotive
involvement here that has to be approached in the same manner as ‘the
reader over one’s shoulder’ - (The Reader Over Your Shoulder
Robert Graves, 1943): one has to stand back, be aloof, remote, and
perceive the work for what it is, as a stranger might, in order to
see what is really there, rather than to be left admiring the
persuasive techniques of the output as being something like a self-assessed acclaim.
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After about
three-quarters of an hour, people began moving into the auditorium
space, to get seated for the talk. The evening was begun with the
‘recognition of country, the elders past, present and emerging’
as the required text goes. One wonders just how serious this
statement is: is the acknowledgement merely just woke? What is
actually changed by this ‘recognition,’ other than the
enhancement of some feel-good, political correctness? An announcement
of the Bond 232, (2023, May semester), student prize winner was then
made; PS was introduced; and the talk began.
Peter Stutchbury (PS)
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The opening was
somewhat of a surprise: PS presented and spoke to slides that made
one recall Paul Jacques Grillo’s 1960 book, What is Design?
and Bernard
Rudofsky’s Architecture Without Architects 1964 publication, leaving
one wonder why these
books
are
ignored today. Items that seemed like clichés
- issues that have
been generally accepted over time and
have become remarkably unremarkable because
of the frustration of
their being
ignored - were being
presented as new, core concerns that were apparently
the basis of PS’s thinking and approach to
his work - his inspiration. There
was something strange here with the diverse concerns
from other
times that
referenced:
the operation of the
bee’s wing, and its simplicity compared with mechanical
drones; how mining was destroying country when wind turbines were a
solution; how suburbia with its crowded housing was undesirable
development caused by colonial models being
introduced into colonies; how the trapdoor spider designed its
flap; how food additives were causing cancer; how removing shoes
inside the home reduced asthma (no
dog shit); how developers
were now using the same housing
models internationally –
the death of regionalism;
how ‘Hampton’ houses
were being dug into steep
sites to fit, instead of
being shaped to suit the site (Palm
Beach, NSW); how the
termite nest was a model for temperature control in high-rise
buildings; how frogs eggs could lie dormant for seven years deep
in the river bed; how
traditional designs were so perfect in
every way; how the
aboriginal perception of place, seasons, and time was more sensitive
than the westerner’s understanding of these
things (based on what was
going on in the world rather
than a subdivision of four);
how design in nature was exemplary; how
electric vehicles were the solution for our word; how
building on flood plains
was irrational;
how
‘aesthetic’ fish
traps fooled
the fish; how nature can
be a source of medicines and materials; how
the ‘guiding’ lichen
was always on
the south face of the tree trunk; .
. . There were many statements about ‘our property’ that seemed to refer to a family
rural holding that was never located or described in any detail. This
introduction looked
like a collage of ideas,
inspirations, and inquiries from
a distant era.*
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A map of the various indigenous languages.
"The Aboriginal languages are more complex than Japanese."
After
PS had
gone through his
preliminary
thoughts and concerns, he
moved on to talk about his project
work with the Australian aboriginals. It was during
this part of his talk
that he paused, noting
with some alarm
that he had only another ten minutes allocated
for his presentation. He
asked if he might take an extra five minutes; this
was approved. PS
must have known that he had at
least another half hour
to go with his prepared talk, but he
continued on as though
nothing had changed, not
asking again. Project
after project was spoken about until he concluded with a short
video dedicated to a
client who had passed away: the
‘lovely man with three
degrees, one architectural,’ who wanted to watch the milky
way. One might have
expected that an architect who
was so careful with
details, and things
subtle, might not
just have
meandered
on with his presentation regardless of the commitment he
had apparently agreed to.
This was yet another contradiction in the complexity of the evening.
Night Sky House.
Sydney Olympic Archery Park.
Sacred Mountain House.
PS’s work is
beautiful; it is always carefully pieced together and nicely
considered; it is exquisite; solitary – standing apart both in fact
and in quality, even when it is heritage work: but one is left a little uneasy
about his critiques that suggest that his approach might be the
solution for everyone, everyday: one might only hope. His work was
shown along with various aboriginal paintings that PS noted were
always showing plans of country, illustrating places that could be
recognised precisely by others, such was ‘the knowledge.’ The
suggestion appeared to be that there was a similar quality of
understanding/sensitivity in his work; or was it that he wanted the
projects to be seen in this way, to be enriched by the special beauty
and wonder of the art?
Heritage project - Joynton Avenue Creative Centre.
The constant
reference to ‘country’ left one wondering just what it meant. Was
it something like ‘placemaking’ that is a jargon word that no one
really knows much about?# Given this interest in landscape, PS’s
promotion of wind farms as being a solution to the ‘mining problem’
seemed naïve and careless. The marvellous Cage of Ghosts
book, (Jon Rhodes, 2017), revealed clearly how aboriginals named their
landscapes in great detail, in elevation, and knew/know them
intimately; in a way more subtly complex than as mere plans: place
was spiritual. The wind turbines could be seen as mining the ‘Father
sky’ with huge ‘London Eyes’ just as aggressively as any mine
gouging into the earth; and nailing the hills, ‘Mother earth,’
with their massive tower spikes serviced by kilometres of roads, leaving one wondering how, with such
a crass carelessness, they could ever be acceptable to any aboriginal
anywhere in Australia.
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In the same way, the
acceptance of the electric vehicle as a happy environmental solution
seemed potentially problematical. Was the total impact of energy
being considered here, or just the cliché
PR of the manufacturers? With one of many factories churning
out 1,000,000 vehicles a year each, what is the total energy equation
for earth? How does this extractive effort equate to the
environmental ‘saving’? How do matters work out when futures are
included? One cannot forget that millions of vehicles need roads,
charging locations, and parking lots . . . all defacing ‘Mother
earth.’ There are inherent problems that lie latent here.
Basin Beach House.
The neighbours are not shown.
A glimpse of the neighbour of the Basin Beach House.
(See below for images of the house in context.)
Looking at PS’s
work, one puzzled about his critique of suburbia: what is his
solution to this dilemma that is sprawling across the world at a pace
greater than ever? What is needed to curtail this momentum? PS
suggests that his approach might be essential here, but his works
suffer from the singularity of modernism – see:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/architectures-two-remote-islands-too.html
and
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/villa-mairea-city-of-solitude.html.
His works are beautiful places alone in the wilderness, neither
wanting nor caring for neighbours. If a project did find itself in a
particular context, (c.f. Basin Beach House and the Indian Head House - see below for images of context), it just ignored the
surrounds it thought little about, or simply disparaged, and the
opinions of others that were considered likewise, in favour of the
preferred understanding of place and its perceptions, responding to
these alone, irrespective of what stands nearby. One wondered about
Trystan Edwards’ Good and Bad Manners in Architecture, 1924.
The Wall House.
The Beach Hut.
The prefab house alone in the wilderness.
How might the prefab houses be gathered together?
Even PS’s
prefabricated house was illustrated as a beautiful, stand-alone
structure, when the intent appeared to be economical, mass production
to solve the housing problem. This well-resolved building is
illustrated as most of PS’s work is, as a mounted diamond: a
solitaire to be admired for its bespoke singularity. How might fifty
of these prefab buildings be located together? Where might they be
placed? Do we just get more suburbia? The mobile trailer
workshop/dwelling concept design was presented with the odd statement
that the canvas top allowed a better relationship with - yes -
‘country.’ How? What? Was one encouraged to see this mobile place
as a potential tiny home – alone in the wonder of a beautiful
wilderness?+ How do six of these trailers sit together? Do we get just
another caravan park? What is PS’s approach to a plural
architecture – the many? Plurality is a necessity in everyday life;
it is the singular that is specialised; unique; bespoke: arrogantly
alone, even if quietly seeking solitude. The difference is that between city and
country. Does one assume PS designs for ‘country’ alone?
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The trailer with the canvas top to link to 'country.'
The trailer set up alone in the wilderness:
the grand vision of the tiny house dream.
An extra bed in the wilderness.
How might the trailers be gathered together?
Priramimma House.
PS might create
wonderful buildings with beautifully crafted furniture and special
details designed for each place, wanting the classic timber
frame-and-brick veneer-and-plasterboard-and-roofing tile approach to
suburban development to go, but the real issues in this mass
development of habitation appear to be ignored; suburbia is far more
than boring, itemised repetition. It involves traditional skills and
the training of contractors, and a variety of ingrained attitudes in
various professions, promotions, and the public. To tell the many
that they are wrong, and to offer a ‘diamond’ as a solution, even
replica ones, appears to be problematical. The solution is never that
straightforward. Something else is involved here beyond the cliché
cry to ‘educate’ the masses. Real issues need to be attended
to and resolved with care
and sensitivity; they cannot just be trampled, mocked,
or dismissed; we are dealing with lives.
A suburban house - someone's home.
A suburban street - someone's address.
The Invisible House.
The Invisible House was sold off and 'developed' - much to PS's chagrin.
How can design be
managed for the masses? C.R. Macintosh puzzled about this and worked
to achieve a satisfactory outcome without success. PS seems not to be
worried about the complex relationships involved in repetition and
number; he is the master on the singular; the alone. The neglect of
this problem of multiplicity, with the many, their expectations, and
proximity, remains a serious contradiction that leaves a gap in, and
weakens the logic of the argument for a ‘designed’ outcome: MY
design. While PS’s work in Brazil is admirable, it seems to seek
some credit for tasks similar to those that Christopher Alexander was involved
in, where crafted solutions are adapted almost in an ad hoc process
to assist the needy. One wonders: how might PS assist the needy here
- Australians in their ‘unsatisfactory’ suburban settlements? The
approach requires more than a random collation of piecemeal
solutions, and, in the international context of ‘need,’ seems to
be an inappropriate proposition.
One wonders: does
PS’s understanding really grasp the depth of symbolic meaning
involved in his cultural references, or does this understanding
happily remain as shallow words and their obvious associations alone?
Here one recalls the enigmatic wind turbine strategy, and the cryptic
EV solutions to the world’s problems: what is the real impact on
‘country’ of these ideas? There is a strange irony in PS’s
thinking where PS, who expresses a sensitivity to matters aboriginal,
seemed amused with his story about the aboriginal who lost his car
keys, so left the new vehicle in the stranded location to be used for
spare parts. The story has sad hints of the derision in the cliché
‘go walkabout careless laziness’ of the aboriginals
promoted by the political right. The photograph that PS spoke to as
an example of aboriginals caring for country showed a group of
aboriginal people under a Bunnings-type folding shelter in the
desert, (the ones seen at markets), complete with plastic folding
tables and chairs, possibly purchased from the same place, without
any comment on this anomaly: no worries! All of these cheap Chinese
products apparently have ‘no impact’ on such sensitive people,
when one might assume otherwise! PS showed how some aboriginals
preferred to sleep outside under the stars rather than being locked
up inside the bedroom of a traditional western house, such was their
sensitivity and awareness. The contradictions left one puzzled.
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That planners might
be a problem in our world today was never suggested; that students
might need to be challenged with more rigour and be presented with
more substance was never raised. PS did suggest that a good student
problem might be to build a house from the rubbish skips of a
construction site, noting the waste generated today. PS promotes
himself as disliking waste: “I value architecture that has no
waste.”
Stutchbury Indian Head House - see Street View below.
The
‘extra’ half hour of his talk had passed when PS used his own home as an example
of how materials can be - should be – used and reused. His
‘concrete and canvas’ home was interesting; it has obviously been
tailored to his needs, his likes, and his dislikes. It looks like a
poetic exercise in adaptive shelter, complete with the courtyard
holding ‘fire, water, sky, and earth,’ at least as actual items
if not managed and considered symbolically. PS’s ambitions to
design everything seems quaint and skilful in a Scarpa way, but looks
to be unrealistic as a comprehensive approach for the revitalisation
and re-invigoration of the suburbia he scorns. Is there is something of
the dilettante lingering here?
Basin Beach House.
The talk noted the
serious problems the world has to address; highlighting them may
help, but when works ignore the clear design issues, as in matters
like the poor display and the singular, MY architecture, what hope is
there? Are architects just too indulgent? There is a need to step
back from MY expression; MY ideas; MY creativity; to become engaged
with a less personally expressive involvement that considers broader
issues in more general solutions. The ‘I am right’ attitude needs
to be changed. Narrow, specialist outcomes like those that
accommodate staring at the milky way, may make wonderful stories and
present lovely images in form, detail, and place, but they do nothing
for the masses but exclude them; allowing the many to see architects
as indulgent and arty, existing in an irrelevant, elite sphere. How can ordinary wonder be captured?
Night Sky House.
The Beach Hut.
The prefab concepts
with their numerous variations suggest a better, brighter future, but
how are these to be gathered together as they have to be? Not
everyone can live on hectares of wilderness. The forms might not be
the colonial model, but they are of that genre - (the Queensland
house was effectively a prefab): the PS designed prefab buildings are
stand-alone structures that potentially gather together side by side,
not unlike the suburbia that is so maligned; a sprawl that is jokingly
identified by PS with a brashly mocking cynicism as “some of our
office’s housing – ha, ha, ha!” - followed by a silent “as if
we would do rubbish like this.” One has to acknowledge that these
are the real places where the majority of the masses live with some degree of contentment: see –
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-to-do-with-suburbia.html.
The logo creator.
The final slide of
the evening was the statement: ‘Know Your Country’ set out in
three lines with the ‘o’s all illustrated as ‘aboriginal’
concentric circles linked with sets of parallel squiggled lines to
give the appearance of a diagonal aboriginal painting. It was a sad,
nearly jokey image that made one recall the fake aboriginal art that
is causing so much trouble both locally and internationally; yet here
we have its images presented in text to highlight matters aboriginal and ‘country’
as a cliché, promotional
graphic, similar in
concept and intent to
those logos seen on commercial items like washing powder.
We have to be both
careful and consistent in these matters. Here one recalls the crass crucifix clock seen in a church, where the cross formed the pointers to the 12, 3, 6, and 9.
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Leaving the
auditorium after a couple of questions that developed into an inaudible personal
conversation, one approached the main glass door only to find it
locked. Even though this was a public event, the exit button on the
side of doorway had to be pressed; then one discovered that the pull
handle needed to be pushed: yes, it was a night of complexities and
contradictions.
As Paul Jacques
Grillo noted, good design has rigour and coherence, an emotional
content embodying resolved care and concern. Jargon words and cliché
concepts are for decoration and proud display only. Quality outcomes are never the result of a ‘tick-the-box’ consideration;
good design has an integral consistency and a certainty about it; it
is not there as a picking and choosing of preferred possibilities: it
embodies a necessity and a coherence - it is never personal; or a
personal expression.
We have to avoid the
hackneyed phrases concerning place and country and seek to understand
what the true experience of aboriginal feeling is really about. Here Bill Nedjie’s little books
are useful: Australia’s Kakadu Man, Bill Nedjie,
1986; Story About Feeling, 1989; Old Man’s Story,
2015. Bill Nedjie saw what was happening with the aboriginal world
and decided, as an elder, to publish these books to record the
aboriginal experience and understanding.
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Ananda Coomaraswamy
pointed out that we cannot see other cultures - the aboriginal world -
from our western perspective. We have to try to understand these
worlds as they were/are understood by those who lived/live it - the
aboriginals. This is a difficult, if not impossible task. It is one
that requires humility and sensitivity; care and rigour; not the
rational, analytical mind that science has told us can resolve
anything; or the brash presumptions of ‘progress.’ We need to
understand that the aboriginal world is a world of spirit - rich in
symbols.
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We have much to do.
We need to indulge less in our feel-good concepts, admirable acts,
and ‘understanding’ words approached with a hagiographic,
architectural vision - any personal indulgence - and attend to the
real issues without isolating them into narrow, specialist solutions.
It is never easy, but the strategy needs to be open and honest; broad
and general; impersonal - poetically rich in an unpretentious,
everyday, unspecific manner. Religion is involved here too: individual responsibility and remembrance.
Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn (Martin Lings) tells us about symbols:
Abū
Bakr Sirāj
ad-Dīn
The Book of Certainty
The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015:
p.29
. . . and since he
(Satan) had in reality only the fruits of the Garden of the Soul to
offer them, that is, the known and wonted objects of perception,
being himself everlastingly barred from the Garden of the Heart, he
could only tempt them with forgeries, giving the known and wonted
objects of perception a semblance of strangeness by suggesting
abnormal and irregular uses for them.
p.37
. . . when, in
connection with the dhikr, the Qur’ān
speaks of the mathal
– ‘example’ or ‘symbol’ – it is referring to the
essential or ‘vertical’ likeness between higher and lower
domains, such as those already mentioned between the Heart and the
soul. A symbol is something in a lower ‘known and wonted’ domain
which the traveller considers not only for its own sake but also and
above all in order to have an intuitive glimpse of the ‘universal
and strange’ reality which corresponds to it in each of the hidden
higher domains. Symbols are in fact none other than the illusory
perfections of creation which
have already been referred to as being guides and incentives to the
traveller upon his journey, and they have the power to remind him of
their counterparts in higher worlds not through merely incidental
resemblance but because they are actually related to them in the way
that a shadow is related to the object which it casts. There is not
the least thing in existence which is not such a shadow . . . Nor is
there anything which is any more than a shadow.
One
might note how art/architecture today
delights in
a semblance of
strangeness by suggesting abnormal and irregular uses
of
concepts, forms, and materials. Perhaps we can come
to
see the
artist/architect
as
one who seeks
to reveal the shadow of
meaning rather
than one who is engaged in self expression; as
one
who seeks symbols
. . . the illusory perfections of creation - (see note ON ORIGINALITY below).
Traditionally
art/architecture is never
about the person: Ananda
Coomaraswamy
noted how every man is a special kind of artist; it
is not that every artist
is a special kind of man.
Again, the words of
Ananda Coomaraswamy might help us understand symbols; he wrote that
the lion is not merely a symbol of the sun, it is the sun in
one of its aspects.
(Christian and
Oriental Philosophy of Art, 1956,
Dover.)
Abū Bakr Sirāj
ad-Dīn (Martin Lings) points out the difficulty involved for us
today:
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.
^
with apologies to Robert Venturi.
*
Peter
Stutchbury was born in 1954, and graduated from the University of
Newcastle in 1978, so may have missed these Grillo
and Rudofsky1960s
reference books.
#
See:
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/09/11/placemaking-reinier-de-graaf-opinion/
and
https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
+
See:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/08/tiny-house-fashion-or-fad.html
and
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/05/thoughts-on-tiny-houses.html.
GOOGLE EARTH - STREET VIEW
Basin Beach House in context:
Basin Beach house Street View:
with exterior images limited in number in favour of selected interior photographs.
The neighbours opposite the house.
The house is located at the end of a row of development like Rietveld's Schroder House: see -
The street context.
The street front of the house can be seen in the distance.
Indian Head House in context:
The house is located on the south of Avalon Beach.
Avalon Headland (Indian Head) is on the north of Avalon Beach.
It looks like the tent house that was originally erected on the site is still there:
it is the dark green rectangle just left of the centre top of the photograph.
View south along Surfside Avenue: the house is to the south, next to the apartment block.
The house can be glimpsed on the right, looking south.
Notice how the architectural image chosen to be published cuts the neighbouring block of units out: see above.
It shows two people and a dog standing on the open corner as though alone in a wilderness, not looking at an apartment block on their right, or the car park directly in front of them.
Even a 'no waste' house needs wheelie bins that turn out to be the great leveller in our society.
The avenue looking north.
The avenue, a cul-de-sac, looking north.
The house has a view of Avalon Headland (Indian Head) on the northeast.
The adjacent buildings on the north.
The glimpse of Avalon Headland (Indian Head).
The Tent House
ELDERS
PS noted that he considered himself, at 69 years old, an 'elder' and,
in the tradition of the aboriginal world, deserved to be listened to.
29 SEPT 23
NOTE:
ON ORIGINALITY
The concept of being
‘original’ is explained by Abū
Bakr Sirāj
ad-Dīn
in The
Book of Certainty.
It
is not a matter of being quirkily bespoke, different, or uniquely expressive. It
has to do with a tracing back to ‘the Original.’ It has nothing
to do with individuality.
Abū
Bakr Sirāj
ad-Dīn
The Book of
Certainty
The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015.
p.32 Note 25.
.
. . a Sheikh has said: ‘The spiritual man has
desires; the profane man is
his desires.’
p.42
As to the Highest
World, It is the Divinity itself, apart from Which there is nothing
at all, and of Which the other three worlds are as a series of
reflections growing less and less distinct. It is this reflecting of
the One Reality which is the praise referred to in the opening
quotation, since to act as symbol or reminder of Him is all the
praise of which a creature is capable; and since there is nothing,
even in the lowest world, which is not a symbol and which is not
above all a symbol of Him in that it must ultimately be traced back
to Him as its Original, there is absolutely nothing which does not
praise him. Thus praise may be called the very root of existence,
since without it a creature would fade into nothing; but the fallen
man does not understand this, tending to consider earthly things as
if they were independent realities, because the Fountain of the Lore
of Certainty does not flow freely enough in his mind to make him
conscious of their highest and most essential aspect, wherein they
never cease to praise.
See also:
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/09/learning-from-bond-232.html
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