voussoirs: BROCH OCCUPANCY

Tuesday 16 January 2024

BROCH OCCUPANCY

There are many varied, published illustrations that offer suggestions on how the brochs were once occupied. Each vision is rooted in its own romantic concept of what a broch was, and what its role in the related community could have been. The illustrations all hold some sense of authority that seems to confirm the adage that a picture tells a thousand words - these images are convincing. One sees elaborately specific, detailed drawings of broch interiors - and some not so explicit - showing people working at various rural tasks, usually with animals on the ground level, and skins and fish hanging high on the upper levels, all with pots scattered around to make the space look totally functional, with no ‘waste’ spaces: there is usually smoke wafting though the space from a central fire. In spite of the conviction displayed in the detail, the role of the intramural stair is generally just ignored, at best left as an aside for one to make one’s own assumptions about. It seems that the artist might be hoping to distract the viewer from wondering about this stairway that, being unique to brochs, should hold some special significance – see https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html.

The proposition that the brochs were built in stages is supported by the change in the form of the walls

that become closer to parallel in the upper levels.

The basic challenge in all of these illustrations seems to be the effort to fill up the void; to make it look as though the interior of the broch truly fits the purpose being proposed; or vice versa. This task of infusing the void with functions so as to justify the proposal being sketched, leads to absurd extremes, with pots and sundry items spread out willy-nilly, placed high and wide, in awkwardly accessible, sometimes nearly impossible locations just to make the expanse of the levels look useful in order to confirm the hypothesis.

Having suggested some domestic purpose for this building, the theory is then offered that the broch was the residence of the local chief, apparently using the ‘storybook’ presumption that people in power, (in towers), live in big houses; e.g. lords living in castles; wealthy noblemen living in grand country houses; and today, ‘stars’ living in expensive, exotic mansions. This suggestion of a hierarchical distribution of accommodation in the broch village struggles to be explained in the drawing that appears to envisage the accommodation of simple, everyday tasks rather than any grand lifestyle one might expect to match the stature of the structure. This leaves one to ask: why build such an elaborate building just to accommodate daily life, when simple village shelters can incorporate every activity illustrated with much less effort and without any stark grandeur? Surely the ego of the leader was never that distorted to be driven to such an extreme excess time and time again? Would one see such a conglomeration of similar, almost identical excesses if the displays were driven by competitive, personal ambitions? Why wouldn’t each seek to outdo the other instead of conforming to the model? “Mine’s bigger/fancier/quirkier than yours!” is all a part of the intent of the aggressive, ambitious spirit seeking its exclamatory expression; its public declaration.

The inner diameter of brochs is relatively small, making the proposition of an open top with an inner, perimeter lean-to structure

difficult to understand as being functionally reasonable for any purpose.

While we might be used to grand interior spaces,

might other more modest times have held other ambitions?

The propositions suggested for broch occupancy all seem just too forced; too quaintly romantic with their assumed rural pastimes that look like museum exhibits; dioramas. There appears to be no essential necessity for interiors of this size, scale, and structural complexity when one sees daily life in its pieces and parts spread almost randomly throughout the broch interior just to make it look used. It is this uncomfortable fit, with its contrast between the simple and the grand, that makes one wonder about other uses that might have greater integrity; that might demand such a built form for their proper accommodation, not merely for magnificent displays of power. One has to remember that these eras did not engage in some of the excessive, blatant, egocentric showmanship we know today; the extreme efforts to boost self-esteem and authority that lie - literally - at the heart of our ‘ME’ era. Things were more integral, intertwined into an essential set of functions, although still with all the human frailties we know today. The extremes of the dilettante and egotist came with Rome, and later in time during the Renaissance. Power in broch times was, perhaps, more related to a spiritual role and status in these stringent eras rather than any gross, narcissistic display; and even then, this leadership role was very likely to be embodied, embroiled/embedded in the everyday, as one sees in traditional communities. We have to remember that the world was abuzz with spiritual energy; everything had its symbolic significance and meaning. Might one assume that expressions of roles were subtle; perhaps something similar to a certain presentation adopted for the appropriate occasion, as is still seen in traditional societies today?#

The ground floor of the broch is seen as the link to the everyday,

the place for preparation and transition - for stores and persons too.

It is from this place that the intramural stair is accessed to get to the upper space.

So what might a broch have been for? The suggestion that the broch was a big, static display of power and prestige seems out of step with the perceived rigours of existence of the broch era, unless one supposes that enforced labour and slavery formed the basis of society at these times, such is the difference between the broch and its village. One has speculated on broch occupancy and symbolism previously - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-symbol-place.html - suggesting a more co-operative circumstance where communities operated as individual groups each supporting and working for the good of the whole settlement, still with the village chief playing an important role – such is life. The idea was that the ground level of the broch was a preparatory/foyer/work space servicing the storage spaces over, and the scared place above that, an area accessed by the intramural stair. This concept gives the stair a central role in the idea of the place. This broad notion of occupancy uses the broch interior spaces without the stressful tensions revealed in other proposals, and without ignoring any of its unique features.

Just how did those on the top of the broch get up there from the stair?

Where did all of the roof rainwater run to?

Stores were essential for survival during winters and hard times when seasonal crops failed. They also provided the basis for trade with other communities when there was a surplus. These goods had to be safe and secure, stored in conditions that would allow their preservation for the periods required. One did not want the stores to rot, go mouldy, become infested with pests, or be pilfered by neighbouring tribes: they had to be retained and defended as required by any potential aggression, to be available, perhaps rationed, when needed. The entry space at ground level could be seen as a checkpoint for a loading dock/work area/packaging space, and for a foyer for ceremonial preliminaries - maybe a space for brewing beer/wine too, and for other communal activities requiring preparation, ready to be stored above? The proposition is that this multipurpose space played the role of accommodating special everyday tasks required for communal storage, and for ceremonial events that progressed ritually up the intramural stair to the higher ‘chapel’ or sacred space for offerings/worship.

This notion accommodates the idea of the internal, timber-framed perimeter structure being supported on the scarcement, with centre poles carrying floor loads to the ground, thus keeping the damp isolated from the higher spaces. The twin walls likewise keep the upper interior spaces dry, with inner openings allowing air movement: one would like to see what air flow tests on a broch model might show to confirm this notion, or otherwise. The whole structure of the broch very likely offered a cool, dry, ventilated space perfect for food/liquid storage. Activities for the preparation of storage could have included smoking, salting, drying, pickling, and brewing, with other activities being the sealing of jars and the packing of wicker baskets, etc. The height of the broch could grow to accommodate the stores needed. This same lower space would also be used for the unpacking and distribution of the stores, and for the termination of spiritual processions before going out into the ‘real’ world again, back into the everyday. It is from this transitional area that the stair is approached/left. The entry into the stair and the movement up to the sacred space above would have been highly significant, just as its exit would have been - transformative. It was nothing like the way we approach it today as tourists re-enacting expectations. There would have been preliminaries required, perhaps for both access to above, and for the stores too; and some finality, some sense of closure too, with, perhaps, celebrations for the ‘thankful’ distributions.

This complexity of use has more necessity than the sketched proposals one sees in various places that display a static, homely vision. This suggested multifaceted set of broch functions truly lies at the heart of the community, supporting it both materially and spiritually with an appropriate expression being made possible for these occasions and purposes as might be required. Such a vision has the broch humming with spiritual meaning, holding material sustenance in a world filled with vitality and spirits, making the broch the real and essential heart of the community: the community’s core necessity for survival in a mysterious, challenging, frightening world. It is a concept worthy of the impressive form; one that does not need the artists’ skilful efforts to make the place look used in a purposeful way. The broch is easily filled with stores for the whole community, with ground activity below and worship on high; not one millimetre is inessential; not one expression is indulgent or forced. Necessity lies at the heart of this purpose that can accommodate structural integrity and growth too – see piecemeal development sketches in https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-symbol-place.html.

The intramural stair goes from ground to top with no access to any other level or 'in between' void.

The broch breathes to avoid mould; smoke filters through the stores to exclude vermin; the cavity wall maintains a cool, dry interior while keeping damp at bay; the supporting daily, ‘special’ activity is readily linked to the everyday surrounding village, with the transition from the everyday to the interior being in itself both significant and managed: one was entering a very special place for a precise role.

‘Broch,’ the name, may come from the Scottish Lowlands ‘brough’ meaning ‘fort,’ but one has to ask when this naming took place, and when it came to be generally accepted. Might the name reflect the attitude that such the structure looked defensive and was therefore something like a castle, a ‘fort’? Armit gave the title to his study of brochs: Towers in the North, appearing to reinforce cliché concepts of what a broch might be – c.f. Tower of London. One needs to be aware of previous assumptions embodied in names. Brochs were built in an era where symbols resonated in an enchanted world; our times are rigorously secular and rational. We will never understand brochs until we see them through the eyes of those living at the time that they were built. All of our ideas must accommodate broch activities as a whole, and not ignore features like the intramural stair when they are found difficult to rationalise into the ‘fit’ of things.

We can never assume that brochs were seen as we might see them today. Approaching Mousa as a tourist is a poor start for any understanding, as the broch is seen as a bespoke entertainment, a distraction to boast about; a tick off the bucket list after having seen the ‘defensive’ lookout – “we climbed to the top; great views!” - that confirms concepts of ‘fort,’ when matters are likely to have been otherwise in times when efforts went into survival rather than into any playful, dramatic, artful expression or gleeful indulgences. These were not ‘Hadid’ or ‘Gehry’ times; nor were they eras interested in gazing at picturesque landscape. Life was a constant engagement with meaning and survival. Disease was prevalent without the medicine we accept today, unquestioned; times of plenty and scarcity varied randomly without any easy supply chain to ensure the everyday everyday. Seasons were critical; predictions relied on the best tools available – the sun; the moon; the stars; the earth; the sky; the breezes; the animals; the birds; the fish; the plants: the events in nature.

For thoughts on the roof of the broch, see:

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

It was the broch that allowed these natural variations in life’s events to be managed – both materially and spiritually: birth and death must have been involved here too. The broch was the place of certainty; the heart of existence; the core reference for understanding. It was the intermediary between the ordinary everyday and the buzzing spiritual cosmos both as fact and symbol; it held the sustenance for life as a whole. The broch physically provided a skin, an outer layer around the elements of the everyday material world, that encased an enclosing spiritual space for intimate engagement with the supernatural through celebrations, and worship: sacred festivals and religious ritual – involving the intramural stair and the sacred zone ‘on high.’

The outer and lower 'wet' walls protect the inner 'dry' walls that have vents for air circulation.

The roof form illustrated here is that argued for in https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html

The deliberate layers of the broch - the outer 'wet'' and the inner 'dry' walls - act as an egg shell and its yolk.

The intramural stair becomes an integral part of this concept, providing access 'in between' to the special upper space.

The transition from the everyday at ground level to the upper space must have been a revelation to the broch dwellers.

The pattern of clockwise circumambulation is clear.

The idea offers a wholeness and necessity to occupancy that the usual illustrations lack. There is no struggle to fill voids or avoid any difficult ideas about the intramural stair. It is a wholeness that embodies the structure of the broch too – its necessity. Twin walls provide a place for the stair; keep the interior dry and cool; and keep the upper dry stone walls lighter, yet structurally stable. The concept rings with meaning and emotion, humming with a reality and coherence that one can feel, shaping the broch with its essential needs rather than merely being some random development of the wheelhouse for the grandiose display of the whimsy of the head man of the village: the latter thought seems too rooted in cliché to be useful. The purpose of the broch and its related form needs to be as refined as the form of the finest violin fashioned can make the most beautiful sounds: necessity demands this. We cannot assume the stair might have been merely a structural convenience (Armit); or that the scarcement might just have been for scaffolding (Brian Smith). Symbolism demands a rich, multifaceted understanding that our rational, ‘selfie’ specialisation knows nothing of.

The proposition is that the scarcement supported a perimeter timber structure,

keeping it above the 'wet' walls, with an array of inner poles supporting the floor,

reducing the spans to suit available timber sizes.

Diagrammatically, the broch is anchored on the axis mundi, with a hierarchy of levels ranging from the exoteric to the esoteric both vertically, up and down, and, in plan, radially. If one places a hearth at the centre of the ground level space, this is the core point of meaning, the anchor of place: the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal; and the centre of the circumferential surround. It is the very first starting location of the broch building, the site of the inaugural celebration; the foundation blessing; a place that retains its significance forever as ‘the centre.’ It marks a zone in the universe, anchors it, with ‘higher’ places above – stores; spirit; below – earth mother; and, horizontally, has a radial engagement likewise. The cluster of the village around the broch relates to this one place – its heart: hearth – its very being: the place of protection, sustenance, and solace, for both body, mind, and spirit: wholeness – holiness.

The proposition is that the basic dwelling developed into the broch to provide a safe community centre

for storage and ceremony.

One can now envisage a broch without apology for any spatial excess, and without having to fudge or forget the ‘known unknowns.’ It is a beginning; we need to know more: much will rely on detailed studies of the life of the times.

P.S.

One is only too aware of the assumptions made in this hypothesis that seeks to establish a purpose for the broch that might hold greater integrity than some of the concepts put forward to date. While our ‘scientific’ era has made startling changes with its rational, logical, and secular approach, this does not establish any preference for such a strategy or even suggest that this might assist in understanding what a broch was. We are looking at a life and understanding that is completely alien to ours.

One recalls David Fanshawe’s search for the man he had photographed in full ceremonial dress, 'Hippo Man,' and used for the cover of of his marvellous African Sanctus recording. Fanshawe returned to Africa and travelled the region with this LP cover, asking if anyone knew who this man was. He did finally find the man, an unassuming, modest, ordinary figure in daily life. As part of a celebration, the man put on his transforming ceremonial outfit and Fanshawe recorded and danced with the group. The man’s special role in the community came into play when ceremony required. Apart from this, he was an ‘ordinary man' - apologies to Christie Moore. Might the broch society have had a similar arrangement for its special occasions?

'Hippo Man.'

NOTE

For more on brochs, see:

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

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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.

Tuesday 16 January 2024

BROCH OCCUPANCY

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