THE SHIP’S RAIL – VARIETIES OF EXPERIENCE

Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet Serpent’s Tail, London, 1991

p.94

I know, I know . . . It’s the time when everyone has lunch or takes a break. Everything floats blithely by on the surface of life. Even while I lean out over the verandah as if it were a ship’s rail looking out over a new landscape, I too sleep. I let go of all tormenting thoughts as if I really were living in the provinces. And, suddenly, something else arises, wraps about me, takes hold of me: behind the midday scene I see the entire life of that provincial town; I see the immense foolish happiness of domesticity, of life in the fields, of contentment in the midst of banality. I see because I see. But then I see no more and I wake up. I look around, smiling, and before I do anything else, I brush down the elbows of my suit, a dark suit unfortunately, made dusty from leaning on the balustrade of the verandah that no one has bothered to clean, not realising that one day it would be required, if only for a moment, to be the rail (free from all possible dust) of a ship setting sail on an endless cruise.

These are the moments that an architect must consider when designing places for people - when shaping everything. Here one thinks of Louis Kahn who spoke of providing perhaps a wider sill as a ledge on a landing, offering an aged person a place to casually pause and rest with some gentle dignity, without having to suffer the embarrassment of fatigue. These are little things, but they are critical if we are to encompass all varieties of experience with a caring subtlety and knowing ease.

Peter Read’s Returning to Nothing The Meaning of Lost Places, Oxford, Melbourne, 1996 comes to mind too: it reveals how place holds meaning in the feelings for tiny things, and memory, not in the admiration of spectacular displays.

Casa Pessoa, 

25 R. Coelha da Rocha, Lisbon.

We seem to concentrate only on the exclamatory, grand gestures today, that seek the unique amazement of our attention with things startlingly bespoke, while the little things are left buried in the tense struggle of an inner silence, ignored as an irrelevance, trampled by distracting nuisances left to be repeatedly dusted away, brushed down, discarded in our constant effort to maintain some degree of contented sanity and satisfaction in well-being.

Grand gestures declare, dominate, demean, and demand with their bold, mocking superiority; they belittle, put down with their entertainment, rather than enrich or uplift. We are left struggling, disturbed, trying to dismiss, discard, and disregard as we seek substance and soul otherwise in our lives, instead of finding an instinctively innate support in having the little things, the ephemeral, fragile feelings, fancies, and affections and their forms and gestures accommodated; enhanced; embalmed in place, (balm as in a fragrant cream or liquid used to heal or soothe), waiting with a knowing patience to be – for the anticipated meeting with the other, if only for a moment.

Carlo Scarpa details.

We must remember how a balustrade could become a ship’s rail; and other things, everything, much more and diverse too, rather than consider only arresting, grand displays or functional necessities – as if feelings and matters subtle weren’t important.

Good design knows otherwise.

NOTE

For more on Casa Pessoa, see:

https://www.casafernandopessoa.pt/en/cfp/virtual-visit

28 JAN 2025

NOTE

The 'LOOK, DON’T TOUCH' balustrade has the same silent impact as the 'KEEP OFF THE GRASS' sign and the 'LOOK AT ME!' building:

BROCHS - GLOOMY, DIM, & SMOKY

After considering the broch as a black hole, see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/01/brochs-iron-age-black-holes.html, one ponders more about light, and its source. While contemplating the reality of the broch experience, one comes to understand how we are encouraged to not only think of broch interiors as brightly lit spaces, but also that this outcome was achieved by the obvious solution of a raging central fire, the primeval source of mystery and ceremony. While we know or can envisage sitting around a campfire in the bush with all of its allure, and can understand how a larger fire can indeed successfully light up an area to create a bright ambience, there are reasons to question this solution for a light source in a broch.

First of all, the material being consumed is most likely to be peat, which burns with a gentle, smoky flame that is no great source of illumination or heat; but it suffices mainly for the latter in the absence of more efficient fuels.

The second issue is that, with large fires giving off bright light, assuming this can be achieved - timber could be a valuable resource, not something to burn willy-nilly - one has to recall how the heat radiating from this source forces one to maintain a safe and comfortable distance. Anyone who has experienced an Up Helly Aa will know about this. Broch interiors are really not that expansive, making the clearance required from a raging, bright fire difficult to achieve, literally pushing one up against a wall. The interior timber structures inside the broch would also have to be kept well clear of any fire, causing one to question the idea that a substantial burning mass might have been a good light source for the black interiors. Fire could have been seen as a major concern in a broch envisaged as a place that was meant to keep stores safe for the community and to hold its most sacred of places and objects; fire must have been something to control and supervise very carefully.

The science of burning is yet another issue to consider. Everyone should know that open fires in poorly ventilated spaces are a problem, as the carbon monoxide combustion gases are deadly at higher concentrations. A large fire could be a serious problem, requiring oxygen to maintain its brilliance.

So one is left wondering about the situation that must have remained gloomy, dim, and smoky at best, with a small peat fire smouldering away 24/7 as it did in the black house. The fire would have given off some heat and a little light, but this would have been modest. The desire to consider a beautiful, bright burning mass prevailing over the broch’s darkness comes up against so many issues that one has to drop the idea and revert to thinking about a black hole with the soft glow of the flames of a peat fire and oil lamps lighting up and defining places as needed.

We have become used to a bright world. It is not that long ago that everyone relied on oil lamps and candles for light. The Tilley lamps offered a brighter solution that even the invention of electricity struggled to match; gas lighting was initially more effective. On visiting the sadly relocated Macintosh house interior at Glasgow University - one of the first of many terrible relocations that seem to rely on harsh, rational logic for their raison detre to ‘protect’ a subtlety that is more than tested# - one is astonished by its darkness. It has electric lighting, but the spaces are lit by only a very few carbon filament bulbs that, with their gentle, mellow glow, look more like Christmas display lights than a source of illumination to aid life and the conveniences it seeks: yet the place was apparently happily occupied and considered ‘avant-garde.’*

#

Other relocated interiors are:

Francis Bacon’s studio interior, now in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/01/bacons-sacrambled-studio-francis.html

Margaret Olley’s home interior, now in the Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah, Australia: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/01/quilty-harding-and-accents.html

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann office interior, now again on display refurbished, in the V&A in London: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-mere-shadow-of-quilt.html

All of these beautiful, interesting interiors suffer from the destruction of their context, with spectators being asked to view things as if nothing had happened - but do not enter! The acceptability of this awkward tension created by this transition to a display, a tableau, seems to be made reasonable with the logic that it is better to have relocated the things than to have lost them. One could argue that, if these places have to be kept, they should be in their original location; that it might have been better to have a photographic/video archive than to put things through this trauma and leave them as dead, dusty bits and pieces, lost, left to gawk at from an air conditioned comfort infused with the amazement of the mechanics of the outcome that has achieved this ‘real life’ museum/art gallery exhibit:

“Can you imagine shifting all of that?”

“How did they get it out?”

“How did they get it back together?”

“It’s amazing what can be achieved.”

Astonishment supersedes and shapes the experience that is meant to be otherwise, something of a homage. We are left with the pretence of a pastiche for popular remembrance.

*

The Macintosh interior can be entered and enjoyed, for a fee. It has been reassembled into a Brutalist 1970s concrete building, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow University, a massive structure that mocks the considered, subtle delicacy of Mackintosh’s design. The exterior tries hard to suggest a Macintosh presence, but is crude and insensitive, with the front door left stranded some metres off the ground level. The jibe ‘Mockintosh’ comes to mind.

NOTE

15 Jan 25

A THOUGHT

While one attends to one aspect of the broch, it soon becomes clear that this is a complex subject, raising other questions that need attention. Why were brochs frequently built close to the sea and/or on prominent locations, or both? This has been interpreted as lookout opportunities, or locations for communication, but might it have been primarily to facilitate defence? High ground is easier to protect than open, flat country; and having one side of the broch protected naturally by the sea allows a better control over the remainder of the perimeter. So it is that one sees the Broch of Gurness in Orkney hugging a cliff; and Muness sitting close to the rocky island edge. Brochs, if one accepts that brochs were for stores and for spiritual uses, were places that needed to be carefully protected; they held the future viability of the whole community, its sustenance, both physical and spiritual. Choosing a site by the sea or on raised ground would make any attack more difficult; more specialised; itemised, as it were: easier to manage. That these locations might also be good lookout places seems to be an added bonus, an integral part of the sense in this choice of siting. Such locations near water would also allow construction items to be readily shipped in, and for ocean catches to be more easily carried in for processing (e.g. distribution/smoking/storage).