COMPLEXITIES & CONTRADICTIONS^
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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?
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?
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.*
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.”
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?
.jpg)
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?
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
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.)
.jpg)
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:
NOTE:
The guile with which architects present their work only develops a lack of trust with the profession.
It took some time to find this house on Google Earth, but one arty image in amongst many in the architectureau study of the house: Portrait of a House: The Making Peter Stutchbury’s Indian Head House – see: https://architectureau.com/articles/portrait-of-a-house/ - revealed that it was adjacent to the car parking area at Avalon Beach with a view of Indian Head. The house is called Indian Head House, but is not located on the headland known as Avalon Headland; it looks across to it. This headland once had a rock face that resembled an ‘Indian Head’ so became known by this name. Time has seen some changes with rock falls: see – https://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/Avalon-Beach-North-Headland-Indian-Face-Falls-2017.php. One wonders why the house is not known as the Avalon Beach House.
Perhaps architects prefer headlands? Lindsay Clare, who introduced PS at Bond 232, published the Clare Granny Flat with the location being described as being Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast in Queensland, when it is really located further south at Palm Beach – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/04/wheres-granny-flat.html.
Both projects appear to have been photographed using the classic architectural deceptions – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/architectural-presentation-problems.html
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
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
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.